


red rose

by iamalystark



Series: LEGACIES [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Not Canon Compliant, Protective Natasha Romanov, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:54:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 26,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27863386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamalystark/pseuds/iamalystark
Summary: Natalia Romanova's daughter died when she was five years old, the same year the spy was recruited by SHIELD and became Natasha Romanoff, doing everything in her power to forget about her past, about the daughter that never truly got to live.When the Avengers encounter one of HYDRA's infamous agents eleven years later, though, there's only so much Natasha can deny before she finally admits to herself that her daughter is alive, and had been the whole time.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Original Female Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov (Marvel) & Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character & Original Female Character
Series: LEGACIES [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058549
Comments: 68
Kudos: 107





	1. epigraph

**❝ _we were just kids,_**

_**we weren't supposed to be heroes.❞** _

_**warrior,** _

_**with fire in her veins** _

_**and armor beneath her skin,** _

_**who crushes the earth beneath her feet.** _

_**heroine,** _

_**a grin made for war** _

_**and eyes flecked with ash,** _

_**striding, powerful, into the arms of death.** _

**SVETLANA ROMANOVA**

_FLOWERS GROW BACK EVEN AFTER THEY ARE STEPPED ON. AND SO WILL_ _**I.** _


	2. i | a mother's love

**WHEN NATALIA FIRST DISCOVERED THAT SHE WAS PREGNANT, HER REACTION WAS PURE AND UNADULTERATED FEAR.** She was only eighteen, mere weeks from the graduation process, and she knew that any life she could bring the child wouldn't be worth living. 

She was alone in the bathroom of a small convenience store a few miles from her latest mission, and she was staring down at three different pregnancy tests, all of them positive. Natalia had just eliminated a target, when she felt an unmistakable sense of nausea, and had to rush from the scene before she did something stupid like vomiting or passing out. 

It hadn't been hard to guess from there, and now she didn't know what to do. There was nobody around so she allowed her hands to shake and tears to prick at her eyes. No matter how she went about it, Madame B. would find out. 

She could only hope the punishment would be less severe if she told her herself. Natalia already knew what was going to happen, termination. The whole point of the graduation procedure was to not form emotional attachments with anyone, leaving no chance of having a child and risking defection. 

Before she left the dingy, little store, the redhead took a moment to place her hand on her stomach and mourn the life that never could have been, and then she returned her mask to her face, her eyes hardening and face going void of all emotion. 

Hours later, when she revealed the information to Madame B., her voice unwavering, the look on the older woman's face could only be described as rage. Pure rage. "I am disappointed with you, Natalia. I expected better from you," the woman spat, grabbing the teenager's arm in a bruising grip to drag her down the hall to medical. 

Neither had to speak to know what was going to occur. "Was it a target? An indulgence?"

Natalia hesitated for the first time in a long time, knew how much worse the punishment would be, but she no longer had the will to lie. "Soldat," came her whispered response, and Madame B. halted suddenly, her eyes flickering with surprise as she eyed her. 

"The Winter Soldier? Your trainer?" 

Natalia's heart pounded in her chest at the sudden interest and intrigue on the other woman's face, but she nodded. 

"The Soldier will be returned to the organization that so kindly rented him to us immediately. This changes everything, my Widow."

Years later, Natalia would remember the fear that coursed through her veins at this, and she could not meet Madame B.'s eyes as the older woman whispered, "You have given us a super soldier of our very own, Natalia."

(Eight and a half months later, she would give birth to a beautiful red haired girl with blue eyes to match her father's, and she would get to hold her for a few precious moment before she was whisked away to be studied and hooked up to countless wires and machines, and in her head, she would call her Svetlana.)


	3. ii | broken promises

_**FOUR YEARS LATER,** _   
_**RUSSIA, 2006** _

**"TELL** **ME, DARLING, WHAT IS THIS?" ASKED THE ONE AND ONLY MADAME B., EYES GLARING INTO THE CHILD'S.** Svetlana stared right back, swallowing nervously.

"A knife?" She asked softly, her voice wavering slightly. The old woman's hand was striking her across the face in seconds, and the four year old felt tears rush to her eyes at the sting on her cheek. 

"Nepravil'no." _Wrong_ , Madame B. hissed, eyes narrowed and sharp. Svetlana's hands began to shake. 

"YA ne znayu. Mne zhal'." _I don't know. I'm sorry,_ she whispered, hoping that speaking in Russian would appease her trainer, even just slightly.

Madame B.'s lips turned up in a snarl and she grabbed the girl's wrist in a bruising grip, pressing the handle of the blade into her hand and squeezing her fingers around it. "Chto eto takoye?" _What is it?_ She demanded, bringing Svetlana's hand with the blade to her other, lightly holding the edge of the metal against her palm.

"U-Um, a c-combat knife?" She guessed, figuring maybe she just hadn't specified, mayb she needed to give its exact name.

Without giving away any of the emotions she was feeling, Madame B. grabbed Svetlana's had, the one holding the blade, and she squeezed.

The little girl whimpered in pain as the cold metal dug into her palm, blood smearing on the blade and dripping between her pale fingers. "Nepravil'no." She spat yet again, and tightened her grip around Svetlana's hand.

With tears stinging her eyes, the four year old's lips quivered. "Kinzhal?" _A dagger?_ "

Her trainer released her right away, and the _dagge_ r in her hands clattered onto the desk in front of her. Svetlana gripped the wrist of her injured hand, willing herself not to cry. "How is it a dagger? What makes it so, Svetlana?"

"YA ne znayu. Prosti, prosti." _I don't know. I'm sorry, I'm sorry,_ Svetlana cried, a pitiful sob tearing from her throat, her eyes squeezing shut. Madame B. struck the girl once more, and Svetlana shook with her attempts to stop crying. 

"Both edges are sharpened. Go clean yourself up, now. Join the other girls in the dance hall." The red haired girl didn't hesitate to jump up, her legs shaky, and run from the room. 

She didn't meet the eyes of the guards she passed, and when she finally made it to the Nurse's, Svetlana pushed open the door hesitantly. "Medsestra?" _Nurse?_ She called, spotting her immediately and shuffling her way over. 

"Svetlana, what have you done now?" The woman scolded, her voice thick with a Russian accent. She wasn't trained to sound like a native to whatever language she spoke, not like everyone else here. 

Not answering, the girl held out her bloody hand and dropped her gaze to the ground. The nurse only sighed, before grabbing her arm roughly and tugging her toward the nearest cot, making her sit and beginning to wipe away the blood coating her hand. 

"You'll be fine," the woman barked, her voice croaky, and Svetlana looked to what used to be a deep gash. It was already healing. 

Nodding and mumbling her thanks, the redhead made her way from the room, and toward the room she shared with only one other person. She knew the other girls were jealous, because she'd seen the place _they_ slept in. Svetlana found herself grateful. 

She clumsily dressed in her leotard and pointe shoes, making sure not to irritate her wound, so as not to bleed on it. After dressing, Svetlana struggled to get her hair into the same slick back bun every other girl was forced to wear, but she managed. 

A few strands outlined her face, just short enough that they didn't quite reach the bun. When she left her room, stalking down the hall and passing multiple guards, she listened to the sound her feet made against the wooden floor, and let it calm her until she reached the dance hall. 

She found that the other girls were already dancing, and slunk her way over to her spot, begining the routine that she'd been taught the moment she could stand on her own two legs. Svetlana was only four, slightly younger than the other girls who ranged from five to six, so she didn't have the grace of older students, of graduates. 

She did have an advantage over the other students, though. Most of them arrived a year or so ago. She'd been there her whole, short life. They danced for two hours, the same amount they normally did, and when Madame B. called for them to halt, they all simultaneously dropped to their feet. "Postel'." _Bed_ , the woman instructed, and the students began to file out. 

Svetlana made to follow them out of the room, but Madame B. stalked forward to grab her arm. "Teper' ty budesh' spat' s drugimi devushkami." _You will be sleeping with the other girls now._

The girl startled, blinking up at the old woman in front of her. "Kakiye?" _What?_ She whispered, confused and scared. "No chto naschet mamochki?" _But, what about Mama?_

A cruel smile curved Madame B.'s lips upward, and she leaned downward to whisper in her ear. "Your mother has left you, Svetlana. She has joined another organization, and no longer wishes to see you."

The little girl's heart dropped. "You're wrong," she whispered back, her voice cracking. "Mama loves me. She said."

"Then where is she? Shouldn't she have come back by now?"

Tears pricked at Svet's eyes, and she shook her head, her hands shaking even more so than before. "Mama loves me." 

Madame B. grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the door. "Idti. Tvoya mat' ushla." _Go. Your mother is gone_ , she demanded, and with fear and bemusement stabbing at her heart, she went. 

She followed the other girls down the hall and watched as they all changed into their night clothes and handcuffed to their beds. The positions were eerily similar to how her Mama slept with one of her arms by her head. 

When Svetlana finally made her way over to an empty cot, changed and lied down, the feeling of an unfamiliar cold piece of metal locking over her wrist had tears rolling down her face silently. Madame B. was lying. She had to be. 

But as the lights were turned off and the other girls slowly fell asleep, Svet couldn't help but wonder, where was her Mama? When she finally fell asleep, tears drying on her cheeks, she thought of what her mother used to promise her every night, "Don't worry, my little fighter. Tomorrow will be brighter," and she thought of how there was no way it could be true. 

(Miles away, Natalia, having been bought by the KGB and her daughter's life having been threatened, planned for a way to get her back.)


	4. iii | teacher's pet

_**ONE YEAR LATER,** _   
_**RUSSIA, 2007** _

**AS THE WORDS LEFT MADAME B.'S MOUTH, EVEN THE WOMAN STANDING BESIDE SVETLANA SEEMED SHOCKED.** "Kakiye?" _What?_ Asked the tall brunette, her eyes widening slightly.

"You heard me, Nadia. All the information on the target is in this folder. I expect it done by the end of the week," the old woman demanded, her eyes just barely flicking over the girl and woman in front of her.

The woman, Nadia, cleared her throat, struggling to hide the way her brows tried to furrow. "She's five, Miss. Most students aren't even cleared to be in the field until they're in the double digits."

Madame B.'s eyes flashed with something like rage, and Svetlana hid her shaking hands behind her back, not meeting her superior's eyes. She didn't dare argue. Before her Mama left her, she thought that her treatment was bad. Without her, though, it had only gone downhill.

"She is not most students, Miroslava. I want it done," she spat, face remaining surprisingly impassive.

"Yes, Ma'am," Nadia responded, her voice soft, and she reached out for Svetlana to take her hand. The little girl looked hesitantly to Nadia's hand, wondering if it was a test, if she'd be punished if she took it.

When she kept holding it out, though, Svet finally took it, biting at the skin on her lip. "I won't let you down," Nadia said, and then she started toward the exit of the room, dragging Svetlana behind her.

"Again," Madame B. added as they reached the doorway, and Nadia froze. "I don't want a repeat of Project Shadow, Miss Miroslava."

Nadia did not say a thing, and she left, Svetlana in tow.

•••

When Svetlana first met Nadia, it had been only weeks since her mother left her. Her wrist was aching and scabbed from the nightly handcuffing, and she'd barely been able to hold back tears when Madame B. had taken her from the cafeteria to her office and sat her down at the desk without a word.

A few moments later, Nadia had walked in, and Svetlana immediately noted the healing scab above her eye and the slight limp to her step.

"Otnyne ona budet tebe pomogat', Svetlana." _She will be assisting you from now on, Svetlana,_ Madame B. had told her, and all the girl could manage to whisper was,

"Not you?"

"I am still your trainer, child. She will be more of a teacher to you. And you to her."

Svetlana still didn't understand what that meant, but she knew it had to do with Project Shadow. She knew better than to ask.

"Svet, come," Nadia said softly, and the five year old glanced up from the ground to see she was lagging behind, and made quick to jog over to her. When they reached the stairs to the clocktower they were currently in, though, Svetlana hesitated on purpose.

Before this mission, her first mission, she'd never stepped foot outside the Red Room. She'd looked out windows, she'd be taught to know the sky was blue and the grass under her feet was green and course, but witnessing it for herself was something the girl knew she'd always remember.

Svet jolted in shock as she bumped into the back of Nadia's legs, shuffling backwards with flushing cheeks. "Here," Nadia said, gesturing toward the gun already set up at the window, and Svetlana swallowed to hide the anxiousness stabbing at her chest.

"Blue shirt?"

"Blue shirt," her teacher confirmed.

Svetlana took a small, steadying breath, and stepped up to the rifle, her short limbs just barely able to get a good grip on the large weapon.

Adjusting the aim, she felt Nadia's hand on her back in a supporting gesture, and the cross hairs finally locked on the target.

The redhead wrapped her finger around the trigger, watched as the man laughed at something a woman next to him said, and she knew she should have pulled it, should have eliminated that target.

She hesitated.

"I- I-"

Nadia was suddenly pulling her back, just as she pulled the trigger, and a shocked gasp escaped her before she could stop herself, her wide blue eyes staring up at Nadia's dark brown ones.

"What- Why did you pull me away? I have to shoot him, Madame B. said-"

"Screw what that witch said," Nadia hissed, taking Svetlana's place at the rifle. The little girl gaped. She flinched when the gun was fired again, the bullet making its mark this time.

"Madame B. will be mad," Svet whispered, already imagining the endless punishments she'd be put through, dancing for hours on end, taking apart and rebuilding weapons until her hands bled, running until her vision went dark, reading and writing the same lines until she passed out, so, _so_ much more.

Looking to the five year old, Nadia sucked in a suddenly shaky breath. "Good thing we won't be there to see it, huh?"

"YA ne ponimayu." _I don't understand_. Svetlana murmured, terrified and confused tears pricking at her eyes.

"How would you like to leave, huh? Do you want a life? A life far away from the Red Room, from Madame B.?" Nadia asked, crouching down in front of the girl and glancing a bit frantically to the window, where people were clamoring in a panic around the target's body.

"I'm not allowed. I'm gonna be a Black Widow, I-" Svetlana cut herself off as a trembling breath lodged in her throat.

"You can be so much better, Svet. You can be good. Just come with me, leave with me." The woman was practically begging at this point, and she knew if they didn't leave soon, authorities would be close to figuring out where they were.

The redhead thought of a life like her Mama used to tell her about. A bed time and school. Snacks and being able to play. No killing. No hurting. Just like before, Svetlana took Nadia's outstretched hand, and she followed her away.

(She was relieved Nadia had saved her from having to kill someone, but was blissfully unaware that the woman had only put off the inevitable.)


	5. iv | project shadow

_**BUDAPEST, 2007** _

**WHEN NADIA AND SVETLANA ARRIVED AT A QUAINT LITTLE CABIN IN THE WOODS, THE FIVE YEAR OLD THOUGHT IT LOOKED LIKE SOMETHING STRAIGHT OUT OF A STORYBOOK.** Her gloved hand was in the woman's as they trekked through the snow, and she could feel the cold seeping into her fingertips and underneath the thick jacket Nadia had bought her. It had taken half a day on the train, and the sun was beginning to disappear beyond the horizon.

Svetlana's wide blue eyes flicked over the cabin, looking for signs of life, but it was dark and seemed to be untouched. "What is this place?" She asked, looking up at Nadia as they climbed the small set of stairs onto the porch, and walked up to the door.

"A safehouse, Svet. You'll be safe here," she answered, offering a quick smile before she brought her free hand up to knock four times. Three times fast, a pause, and one more.

Svetlana's heart began to beat just a little faster at the thought of there being someone else in there. Despite having just knocked, Nadia slid a key from her pocket and unlocked the door quietly.

Carefully stepping past the threshold, the pair shuffled some of the snow from their shoes, and Nadia glanced around, a satisfied look on her face, before she called out, "Buton rozy." _Rosebud._

"What?" Svet questioned, her brows furrowing, and then she heard footsteps. She tugged her hand from her teacher's, tensing, and locked her eyes on the only hallway she could see.

And then a little girl her age poked her head out of one of the doors, her eyes lighting up. "Mama!"

The girl came running and launched herself into Nadia's arms, not even seeming to notice Svetlana yet. "Zdravstvuy dorogoy." _Hello, Darling_ , the teacher murmured, a smile on her lips. Svetlana watched as Nadia peppered the other girl in kisses, and a flare of jealousy surged through her, remembering how her Mama used to do that to her at night, away from the prying eyes of Madame B. and other Red Room associates.

But then she remembered how her mother left her, and it had been a year with no sign of her. "Eto kto?" _Who is this?_ Svetlana demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.

Nadia set the girl down, her smile slowly fading but not disappearing completely. "This is Oksana, Svet. She's my daughter," the teacher explained, and now that Oksana had seen Svetlana, she was tense and half hiding behind her mother's legs.

The redhead blinked. "Ty kak moya mama?" _You're like my Mama?_ She gasped, still not moving from her spot a good two feet from them.

Nadia chuckled, shaking her head, and she crouched down in front of Svetlana, taking her hands in hers. "I did not give birth to her, Svetlana. I saved her from a faction of the Red Room a year ago, much like I saved you."

Realization dawned on Svet then. "Project Shadow?" She asked, but she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. Nadia nodded, her lips pursing.

"Show her, Sana."

Taking a hesitant step forward, Oksana walked a few steps to the side, into a darker part of the room, and she abruptly disappeared. Svetlana's mouth fell open as she gaped.

A tap on her shoulder had her yelping and stumbling toward Nadia, spinning around with practiced ease to see Oksana standing in the shadows behind her. The shadows.

"You can travel in the shadows? How? Oh my gosh!" Svet cried, excited, and she poked Oksana's shoulder, eyes sparkling in interest.

The brunette girl giggled. "Were you expecting your hand to go through me? I'm not _made_ of shadows!" She cried, still laughing, and Svet finally noticed the thick Russian tilt to her words.

Svetlana didn't understand how Oksana was a student but hadn't been taught to mask her accent, but didn't say anything about it. "You're something new," Nadia told her daughter," Svet is just trying to understand you."

Frankly, the redhead was offended at how easily the teacher could read her. "Oh, okay! Is she my new sister?"

Svetlana blinked owlishly at the bluntness of it. "I don't think. . ." Nadia began, but she interrupted her.

"I've never had a sister before."

Oksana beamed. "Me neither."

Neither of the girls noticed Nadia smiling at them. Shyly, Svet followed Oksana to the living room, where the brunette girl was pointing at the TV with a smile. Settling onto the sofa, the redhead was quick to hide the shock ingrained on her face when the screen flickered to life.

"I thought it was cool too," Oksana told her, sitting next to her, and as whatever film was on caught her interest, she completely forgot to respond to the other girl.

After a moment, though, when she realized Nadia wasn't joining them, she turned around, peering over the back of the couch to see her teacher in the attached kitchen, heating up a small pot of water. "Why did you say rosebud when we entered, Miss Nadia?" Svetlana murmured questioningly.

"I've told you, Svet, it's just Nadia. And it's a codeword, one you'll need to remember. Along with the knock. When I get back from anytime I leave, I will knock, and I expect you to hide anyway. If I say the codeword, it is safe to come out. If I do not, you run, and you do not stop. Understand?" Nadia explained, her tone serious as she opened a cupboard, reaching for something.

"Yes, Nadia," Svetlana muttered, sitting back down correctly, looking down at the shoes still on her feet. Tapping them together, she tried to figure out what she was feeling. Overwhelmed was the closest. Without looking back at her, Svet opened her mouth to speak once again. "Will you go back to the Red Room?"

Nadia didn't respond, and the girls could hear her footsteps as she walked over to them. In her hands were two mugs of something, which she carefully nudged into their hands. It was brown and steaming, and when Svetlana brought it up to her nose to smell, her mouth watered. Nadia sat down on Svet's other side, shifting so she was facing them both, and she frowned. 

"If I did, I'd be killed, and you two wouldn't be safe," she told them softly. Svetlana heard Oksana's hitched intake of breath, but she didn't react. Licking her lips, Nadia gave them both an unconvincing smile. "When I rescued Sana, I pretended as if she died. I was punished and almost killed, and none of them trusted me to be completely efficient again. But saving you, Svet, it would cost me my life."

A rush of guilt and anxiety bubbled in her chest, and she swallowed down her nerves. "They'd never believe I'd let you be killed. They'd kill me, and they'd search for you. They'd become suspicious, and they'd search for Sana, too," Nadia explained, the only sign of her concern being the way her brows were furrowed ever so slightly. "Even if, for any reason, they believed me, they'd still kill me. You would be alone, you wouldn't be safe."

The woman's eyes flashed with terror for the smallest moment, but Svetlana still saw it. It hit her then, that Nadia really cared about her. Probably almost as much as she did her daughter. She was once again overwhelmed, but this time with the fear of her leaving. 

Mama had cared. Mama had left.

"This is why the knock and the codeword is so important, okay?" Nadia asserted, her brows raising. 

"If you won't go back, why will you need to leave?" Svetlana asked, immediately catching on to the fact that the codeword and knock would still need to be used. 

"Food, supplies. Any number of things," she answered, her serious tone easing up. The small redhead could feel her cheeks heating up in embarrassment from having not realized. In a way to change the topic, she looked back to the drink in her hands. 

She still hadn't moved it, and could feel the porcelain burning her hands, but Oksana was sipping at it with a determined pout, making faces every time it burned her tongue. It was like she expected the drink to have suddenly cooled every single time. "What is this?" Svet verbalized, meeting Nadia's gaze. 

The woman looked sad for a moment, before masking it. "It's hot chocolate, Svet. You'll love it."

She didn't doubt it. "Chocolate has sugar in it, right? We're not supposed to have sugar. It will make us fat," the five year old told her teacher matter-of-factly. Nadia released a heavy sigh through her nose. 

"A little bit will not make you fat. With your enhancements, not even a lot could, anyway," she informed her, then glanced to Oksana. "You too, Sana."

Oksana smiled at her mother. "I don't care if I get fat, Mama. I like hot chocolate."

Nadia laughed at that, but neither girl knew what was funny. When Svetlana finally brought the cup to her lips and blew on it gently, Oksana was watching her intently. Slowly, carefully, she took a sip.

Her eyes widened comically. "I don't care if I get fat either," she decided, taking another drink without a care for how hot it was. Nadia laughed once again.

They fell into a relatively peaceful silence for a while, watching the TV and enjoying their drinks, and Svetlana firmly ignored how badly she wished her mother was there. "I think we'll be okay," Nadia murmured after a little while, a serene smile tugging at her lips.

(Oh, how wrong she was.) 


	6. v | normal

**_BUDAPEST, 2007_ **

**THAT NIGHT, SVETLANA HAD TO SHARE A BED WITH OKSANA.** Nadia hadn't prepared for her arrival, and she'd promised that the next day, they'd go and pick out a new one for her to have to herself. It wasn't a small bed necessarily, but Svet wasn't used to having another person in the bed with her, so she lied down as close to the edge as she could manage without falling off, and put her arm above her head.

Nadia, who was standing in the doorway, immediately sucked in a sharp breath. "I won't be cuffing you to the bed. That's not normal."

Right away, Svetlana felt a pang of hurt, like the woman was saying _she_ wasn't normal, but she didn't show it. She shifted, not meeting her teacher's eyes. "I can't sleep without my arm up there," she admitted softly.

The woman nodded, rubbing at her own wrist. "I understand. But you won't be made to stay in bed all night. If you need something, come get me. If you need to use the restroom, then do so. If you just don't want to be in bed, then don't be," Nadia said, her voice passionate. It was clearly something that meant a lot to her. Walking over, she knelt by the bed, and Svetlana sat up a bit. 

"I want you to have a life here, Svet. You deserve one so, so much." With that, she stood, going around the other side to press a kiss to her daughter's forehead. "I love you, Sana."

"YA tozhe tebya lyublyu, Mama!" _I love you too, Mama!_ Oksana called as her mother started back toward the doorway, and Nadia smiled at the five year olds. 

"Spokoynoy nochi, devochki." _Goodnight, girls,_ the now-former assassin murmured, and she left the room. 

The girls were silent for all of one minute, the only sounds in the room being their breathing. Finally, Svet couldn't help herself, curiosity winning out. "Kak stat' ten'yu?" _How do you become a shadow?_

Oksana's dark eyes met hers, just barely visible with the absence of light around them. "Vrachi prichinili mne bol'. U nikh byli igly i instrumenty." _The doctors hurt me. They had needles and tools,_ the other girl answered hesitantly, her voice meek, and her hand brushed against Svet's in an effort to stop it from shaking. 

The small redhead shied away from the touch at first, but she could tell how nervous Oksana was. Biting her lip, she slowly reached out and entwined her fingers with hers. She made a shocked noise but then smiled at Svetlana. "YA bol'she nikomu ne pozvolyu prichinit' tebe vred." _I won't let anyone hurt you anymore,_ she vowed in a nearly imperceptible whisper.

"Kak? Tebe vsego pyat', kak i mne." _How? You are just five, like me,_ Oksana asked, her brows furrowing in confusion. 

A wide grin split Svetlana's lips apart, and she met the other girl's eyes. "Mne ne pyat' let." _I am not just five._ She replied, and even she did not know quite what she meant. Oksana didn't understand either, just continuing to frown. 

"Nam pora spat'. Mama rano nas razbudit." _We should go to sleep. Mama will wake us early._ The black haired girl murmured, her eyes beginning to droop. Svet could detect a bit of a slur to her words. 

"Ladno, Sana," _Okay, Sana,_ the redhead said in reply, feeling tiredness beginning to weigh on her too.

As her eyes slipped closed, Oksana murmured one last thing from beside her. "Dolzhen pozvonit' tebe Lana. . ." _Should call you Lana. . ._

It rhymed, Svetlana thought, before she was drifting off into unconsciousness. While she didn't yet know the girl beside her very well, she would come to love Oksana as a sister for years to come.

•••

The next morning, Nadia was true to her word, and after the girls were dressed properly, she took them to a large mall. It was bustling with people, and Svetlana stuck to her teacher's side, hand wrapped in the older woman's. 

Nadia had offered to hold Oksana's hand too, but the brunette girl had declined, and instead was holding Svet's other hand. It was slightly annoying, having both hands incapacitated, and she felt slightly vulnerable, but Nadia being by her side calmed her nerves slightly.

Besides, it wasn't like any of them could be recognized. They all had winder hats pulled low over their faces, and thick jackets with collars that slightly hid their faces. The five year old had taken a moment to giggle at their silly appearances before they left the cabin. 

Oksana kept tugging at the astrakhan clothing like it was making her skin itchy, but Svetlana wasn't bothered, and watched the other girl with an amused grin. 

"Svet, is there anything you would like specifically?" Nadia asked, pulling her from her thoughts. She glanced up with a confused frown. 

"I thought we are here for a bed."

"We are, but you have no things. We need to get you clothes before we get a bed, because we will have to carry the box around," she told her, and once again Svetlana flushed, embarrassed. She never said the right thing.

"Um, I don't care," Svet mumbled, keeping her eyes down, and Nadia sighed in what might have been disappointment before leading them to a kids' store and telling her to pick out at least a dozen outfits. 

The redhead froze, unsure of what to do, unsure of what to pick. Oksana pulled her away from Nadia with a smile, pointing out a few articles of clothing she thought were particularly beautiful. Relieved, Svet just let her new so-called sister pick everything out for her, and didn't even see most of it before Nadia brought it to the cashier to be rung up. 

Svetlana had only been shocked a few times in her short life, but she could certainly add a tally to the list when Nadia and the man behind the register began speaking completely gibberish. She blinked owlishly up at the adults. 

"What did you just say?" The five year old questioned, her voice so high it was almost a squeak, and Oksana giggled beside her. 

"That was Hungarian, Svet. We are in Budapest," Nadia answered, amused, and for what seemed to be the millionth time that day, the little girl flushed as red as a tomato. This time, she didn't feel as bad as before, and both Miroslavas were laughing at her good-heartedly.

Before they got the bed, Nadia asked one more time if Svet had thought of anything she wanted, and right as the redhead was about to decline, she spotted something in the window of one of the stores and stopped dead in her tracks. 

(They left the mall with two leotards and two pairs of pointe shoes. One for Sana, of course.)


	7. vi | a mother's fear

_**BUDAPEST, 2007** _

**NADIA DIDN'T TAKE AS WELL TO DANCE AS SVETLANA HAD, THOUGH, GRANTED, THE REDHEAD DID HAVE LONGER TO LEARN.** Oksana stumbled through what Svet thought were some of the easiest moves, but she wasn't mean to her like Madame B. had been.

She'd been with the Miroslavas for a little over a month now, and she could already say with confidence that it was a much better life than the one the Red Room provided for her.

"Net net. YA skazal, slegka sognite koleni." _No, no. I said bend your knees slightly_. Svet corrected, giggling as Oksana basically dropped into a squat. She dropped out of the pose she was in to demonstrate, and pulled her sister up.

"Slegka." _Slightly_ , she said yet again, bending Sana's legs the right amount. The dark haired girl smiled at her.

"Ne dumayu, chto kogda-nibud' budu tak khorosh, kak ty." _I don't think I will ever be as good as you._ Oksana admitted, straightening up with a crooked grin.

"You just need practice!" Svetlana exclaimed, spinning around on one foot, just to show off.

Sana rolled her eyes. "You're just being nice."

Svet shook her head stubbornly, opening her mouth to speak, when she heard a car door slamming outside. "Mama's home!"

As Oksana jogged toward the door, Svetlana grabbed her arm with a frown. "Nam nuzhno pryatat'sya." _We are to hide._ The redhead reminded, but Sana rolled her eyes again.

"It's stupid."

"Well, what if there's a bad guy?"

"There's not a bad g-"

They both stopped talking as five knocks sounded at the door. Three fast, a pause, two more. "It's supposed to be four, right?" Sana whispered, grabbing Svetlana's arm.

Svet began to back up, pulling Oksana with her. "Um, our room," she responded, and the girls ran down the hallway as quietly as they could, hearing the door's lock click.

Right as they got into their room, Svet heard the door open, and stopped their door from latching. She knew from experience that it always made a loud noise.

It was barely a centimeter open, and Svet pressed her ear to the opening, straining to hear Nadia. "Girls? Where are you?" She didn't say the codeword.

She knocked wrong, and she didn't say the codeword. "Vy dumayete, chto ya glup? YA znayu, chto u tebya yest' kod." _Do you think I am stupid? I know you have a code,_ an unfamiliar voice whispered, and Svet sucked in a sharp breath.

"Rozovyy kust." _Rose bush,_ Nadia called hesitantly, and Svet knew without a doubt now that something was wrong.

"The window. We need to go," the small redhead whispered, and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Oksana's wide eyes found her, and she could see tears shining in them.

"B-But, Mama-"

"We need to _go_." Svet hissed, and she pulled her toward the window, unlocking it and starting to shimmy it open. Just as it became open wide enough for the young girls to slip through, there was a noise.

"They're there? In the room?"

Svetlana swallowed down her nervousness, holding out her hands for Oksana to step onto. As the other girl's pointe shoes dug into her fingers, Svet realized how much harder it was going to be to run. And through snow?

Oksana landed on the ground outside with a grunt, and there was a sudden scuffle just outside the room. "Girls, run!" Nadia screamed, and Svetlana didn't have to be told twice, scrambling to climb out, and immediately feeling the freezing air on her bare arms as she ran for Oksana.

The black haired girl was waiting for her a few feet away, but Svet shoved her the second she reached her, her shoes sending sharp pains up her legs with every step. "Mama!" Oksana yelled, stumbling to a stop, and Svetlana slammed into her, nearly falling.

Nadia and an unfamiliar woman had burst out the back door, both throwing punches and looking ready to kill the other. "Go!" The woman screamed, immediately getting thrown to the ground with a kick to the gut, and Svetlana tugged at her friend's arm to no avail.

Sana wasn't budging. "Come on!" Svet pleaded, digging her nails into Oksana's arm as she pulled with all her strength. She didn't have time to be shocked when she actually managed to pull her back a yard or so.

"Mama!" Sana cried, sobs wracking her body as she clearly wanted to go back and help her.

Nadia was panicked, meeting both girls' eyes at least once before she managed to jab the knife they'd been grappling with into the other woman's side. Jumping up, Nadia sprinted after them, and Oksana finally began to listen, her hand wrapped in Svetlana's as they darted through the snow and weaved through the thickening trees.

"Don't stop running, girls!" Nadia panted, a few yards behind them, "Find Yel-"

A gunshot going off cut off whatever the adult was going to say, and the five year olds both froze, watching the woman who took care of them crumple to the ground, her eyes unseeing as blood flowed from the bullet wound in her head. They would never know who or what Nadia had wanted them to find.

Oksana let out an ear piercing shriek that had Svet flinching, even as tears stung her eyes. The crazed, unfamiliar woman raised her hand that still held a small pistol, aimed it at Svetlana's head, and fired.

"Net!" _No!_

Oksana lunged at her sister, and the bullet that would have torn through the Romanova's skull, instead grazed her cheek just under her eye and embedded in the bark of the tree behind her.

Blood poured down the side of her face and her hand flew up, clutching at the wound as crimson seeped through her fingers. Oksana sidestepped quicker than Svetlana had ever seen her do, and the second her foot made contact with the shadow of a tree branch, she disappeared.

Reappearing behind the woman, the black haired girl leapt onto her back, scratching at the woman's face. Svetlana gave one of her best kicks to the woman's stomach, no doubt pronounced by the pointe shoes she'd somehow forgotten she was still wearing.

It wasn't hard for the girls to get her to fall, Svetlana shoving at the back of her knees and making sure she twisted sideways, so as not to land on Sana. "Come!" The redhead begged, and her sister finally obliged, both of them taking off in a run.

The woman was back up in moment, firing at them, but the diagonal way they ran and the amount of trees obstructing their path made sure no bullets found their targets. For a while, at least.

They managed to evade her for a few minutes, but the woman wasn't an amateur, and eventually one managed to find its way home, burying itself in Svetlana's shoulder.

The five year old crumpled to the ground, letting out a cry of pain as she hunched over, tears streaming down her face. Oksana had never felt so scared in her life, so panicked. Her mother lied dead on the forest floor, and from the way things were going, it seemed she and her sister were next.

Something her Mama had told her a few days before came to her then, a whole memory in a fraction of a second.

_"One day, Sana, you might have to take someone with you when you travel in the shadows. It might be me, it might be Svet," Nadia murmured, squeezing her daughter's hands as she gave her an assuring smile. "One day, Love, someone might come. Something might happen, and if it does, I need you to try."_

_"I need you to try."_

Squeezing her eyes shut, Oksana wrapped her arms around Svetlana, and she melted into the darkness.

(Unbeknownst to them, because of their actions, HYDRA had become aware of a certain super soldier's existence.)


	8. vii | bloody and broken

_**BUDAPEST, 2007** _

**NATALIA FOUND HER DAUGHTER BY ACCIDENT.** The report of a little redhead girl being admitted to a Hungarian hospital with a gunshot wound had made her look up from her spot on a dingy motel bed, and when she saw the blurred image a member of the press had managed to snap, she _knew_. 

All she could really see was a flash of red hair and a vague outline of her facial features, but she knew that was her baby. That led her to now, darting through the hospital doors as at least a dozen people laid fire on her.

•••

Svetlana woke, and she hurt. Her head was pounding, and she could feel remnants of what must have been some sort of drug, but as she registered that she was in some sort of hospital, she realized that the doctors could not have known that she was special, and that any medicine they used would not work on her. 

Her shoulder pulsed with dull pain and the side of her face felt tight with stitches. Bringing her hand up, Svet brushed her fingers across the almost healed cut on her cheek and curled her lips downward in displeasure. "Lana?"

Snapping her head to the side, she was greeted with the sight of Oksana's tear stained face. "Sana, gde my?" _Sana, where are we?_ She asked, wincing at the way her voice cracked from the dryness of her throat. 

Oksana's eyes flickered to the ground for a moment before she looked back at her. "Bol'nista." _The hospital._ Her sister murmured, wringing her hands in her lap. "I know we are not supposed to go to hospitals, but Mama is gone and I did not know how to help."

Svetlana felt a sharp pang of hurt stabbing at her heart at the reminder that Nadia was gone, but brushed it off, reaching over to pat Sana's hand. "It's okay. How did you get in?"

At that, the dark haired girl mustered a small smile. "I used the shadows. They don't know I'm here," Sana explained, pulling her jacket tighter around herself. It was then that Svet realized the other girl wasn't wearing what she'd been wearing when the woman had tried to kill them. 

She still had the leotard on, stained with Svetlana's blood, but she also had a thick jacket on over it, her pointe shoes replaced with winter boots. It wasn't hard to guess that Oksana had probably stolen them. Instead of her own bloodstained outfit, Svet was wearing a light blue hospital gown that provided no warmth whatsoever. 

"We have to go. The woman will come looking," the small redhead declared, throwing aside the thin sheet that was lying over her legs and taking a moment to frown at how pale her skin was. Sana nodded, standing up as Svet did and walking over to her and trailing after her as she padded toward the attached bathroom.

Svetlana had to climb onto the sink to peer into the mirror, and Sana, panicking, stood behind her and put her hands on her back to keep her from falling. Tugging the shoulder of the hospital gown down, the redhead scrunched her nose at the sight of bandages with a small red patch on it, and she tore them off easily. 

The gunshot wound was stitched on both sides, but it had healed enough that it didn't need stitches anymore. Once they left, they'd need to get supplies to remove them. "Nam nuzhno idti." _We need to go,_ Svetlana stated, climbing down with Sana's help and righting her hospital gown. 

Oksana didn't hesitate to follow after her, and after Svet cracked the door open a bit and looked both directions to see if anybody was there, they slid out into the hall. The redhead startled a bit as Oksana slid her hand into hers, but she shot a smile at her and kept going, keeping her fingers curled firmly around her sister's.

Svetlana felt a dull throb of pain in her shoulder as she moved, but she chose to ignore it in favor of escaping and _surviving_. While Oksana didn't have enhanced hearing, Svet did. So, when the faint, unmistakable sound of bullets clinking together as someone walked met the young Romanova's ears, she barely had time to jerk Oksana through a cracked open door and close it.

"What-?"

Svetlana slapped her hand over Sana's mouth, eyes wide as she gestured with her head toward the windowed part of the door as at least four men in dark clothing passed. An elderly lady that lied in the hospital bed of the room they'd entered suddenly said something in Hungarian, and both girls froze, looking between each other and the woman. 

They had no idea what she'd said, and knew that the woman would likely draw attention to her room soon. Without a second's hesitation, the five year olds darted back out into the hallway and went the opposite way the men had. Just as they were about to turn a corner, a barked yell found their ears. "Tam!" _There!_

One of the man had happened to turn and had spotted them, and they all drew their weapons, starting toward the girls, who immediately began sprinting as fast as they could, passing occasional nurses and doctors that called after them or just ignored them. Just as they got to a staircase, a gunshot sounded right next to them, and Svetlana cursed their stupidity. With how public any hospital was, so many people had to have heard them, and with a shooter on the loose, the hospital would be put into lockdown. 

The only way to bypass it would have to be. . . An idea made Svetlana's eyes light up as they raced down the several sets of stairs, nearly falling a dozen times. Seeing two women at the bottom of one of the staircases, the children froze once again. It wasn't hard to guess that they were from the Red Room, and they were quickly stalking their way toward them, so Svetlana made the executive decision to shove open the door that led to the rest of the level and pull Oksana along behind her. 

Oksana made a terrified noise all of a sudden, and Svetlana felt sick as she was suddenly enveloped in darkness. It surrounded her, filling her every sense and making her panic for those few short seconds. And then she was back in the hallway, a few yards ahead with Sana now in the lead. An instance just like that flew into the forefront of her mind at that moment, right after she'd been shot and the woman was about to catch up with them. 

_Oksana had taken her with her in the shadows._

Svet didn't have the time to gape, her lungs beginning to burn as her breaths grew more and more strained. "We have to start a fire," she gasped to her sister, ducking down yet another hallway, and Oksana made a strangled noise.

"But. . . All these people. There are children, old people. _Mothers._ "

Svetlana bit her lip, tears pricking at her eyes. "It is the only way we will live. It is the only way to escape," she told her, her hands beginning to shake of their own accord. Sana didn't say anything for a moment, and Svet's panic was beginning to increase because she could hear them getting closer, but she finally spoke. 

"How?"

It was then that Svetlana caught sight of a supply closet, and she tested the handle, breathing a sigh of relief when it opened with ease. She was quick to find just what she needed, picking it up and carrying it out for Oksana to see. "With this," the redhead answered softly. In her hands she held a canister of gasoline. 

"We don't have anything to light it," Sana insisted, but as more gunfire sounded, farther away, the dark haired girl realized her mistake.

Svet took a deep breath, and she peered back around the corner, where the men were approaching. (Where had the women gone?) As expected, they rained fire on her, and she jerked backward, squeezing her eyes closed. They were running in their direction now, would be there in a matter of moments, and any small amount of movement was likely to get them to fire. 

Mustering all the strength she could in her small, injured arms, Svetlana threw the canister toward them as hard as she could. It was almost funny that she heard the clink it made as it hit the metal before it exploded in a blaze of fire. 

•••

When Natalia heard the explosion from the level above the one she was on, she almost froze in the firefight she was in. Thankfully, she didn't. She continued to return bullets to the people shooting at her. Whether they were KGB or Red Room, she did not know.

All she knew was that she needed to get to her daughter. It felt unreal that her baby was in the same building as her, that she was minutes away from holding her in her arms. It was that idea that made her finish the fight, fatal gunshot wounds on the bodies of every single one of her assailants. 

Natalia made her way to the stairs in a matter of seconds, and she could see flames flickering near the entrance above her. She ran up anyway, darting past a particularly large flame that was spreading faster than she could keep up with and turning her eyes upon the sight in front of her. 

She almost collapsed. There were burnt, darkened bodies and there was rubble littering the floor. And then she saw the pale, bloody and dirty arm of what had to be a child. It was barely visible beneath the debris, but it was unmistakable. That was her girl. And she was dead. 

Fire raged around them, and the amount of rubble piled on top of her, along with the fact that she'd likely been right next to the explosion when it happened. . .

A helpless sob escaped the Black Widow's mouth, and she jerked back as flames began to lick at her legs. She had no choice but to escape, leaving her daughter's body to the debris. When she finally managed her way out of the rubble, coughing and wheezing, Natalia didn't know how to go on. 

Mere hours later, though, she would meet Clint Barton, and he would choose to save her life instead of ending it. She would almost wish he _had_ killed her, and she would ask him why. He would tell her that everybody deserved a chance, and she would become Natasha Romanoff, SHIELD agent. No longer would she be Natalia Romanova, a failure of a mother.

(Unbeknownst to anyone but the very organization themselves, HYDRA would send the Winter Soldier to retrieve both broken and bloody children from the remains of the hospital, and just barely, they would live.)


	9. viii | papa's eyes

_**TWO YEARS LATER,** _   
_**RUSSIA, 2009** _

**WHEN SVETLANA WOULD LOOK BACK AT HER YOUNGER YEARS, SHE WOULD LAUGH AT THE THOUGHT THAT SHE'D HAD IT BAD.** While it was true that the Red Room was a place no child should ever be, HYDRA was so much worse. Jumbled memories of her and Oksana's first few weeks there flew through her mind then, of screaming and begging with the scientists to let them go as they were cut into and experimented on for hours, _days_ on end.

The thing that broke her heart most, perhaps, was the way Oksana seemed used to it. It was rare that they were put back on the tables for long nowadays, seeing as their healing abilities were completely catalogued and they'd done countless experiments, injecting them with countless mystery liquids, taking more than their body weights in blood over time. 

The thing Svetlana hated the most, though, was the quiet. When one of them was gone, or when one of them was sleeping, their cell was unbearably quiet. The small redhead would fill the silence with random babbles, or hums of a song she didn't quite remember, and she would dance. 

They didn't have leotards or pointe shoes anymore, just plain white scrubs and no shoes, but Svet always made it work. And when Oksana was there to follow along, it was almost fun.

"Podozhdi podozhdi. Kak ty eto sdelal?" _Wait, wait. How'd you do that?_ Sana asked, grabbing her sister's arm to get her to stop. 

"Come _on_ , do you know how satisfying that move was? Khorosho, slegka povernite verkhnyuyu polovinu vlevo, no derchite nogi v tom zhe polozhenii, poprobuyte yeshche yeshche raz." _Alright, turn your upper half slightly to the left, keep your feet in the same position though, try again._ The seven year old instructed, trying to help Oksana position herself but stepping back when the black haired girl glared at her, batted her hands away, and did it herself. 

Svetlana rolled her eyes but couldn't help her grin as the other girl successfully completed the twirl. "You're almost as good as me," she boasted, and Sana was about to snark back at her, when Svet's smile abruptly dropped and she fell into a normal standing position. "They're coming."

Oksana dropped and darted over to her sister, grabbing her arm. Over the last two years, Svet had discovered that Oksana was the type of person that found comfort in touch. While that wasn't really who the redhead was anymore, she'd do anything for her sister. They were all they had left, after all. The door slid open, revealing two blank faced guards. 

"Du." _You_. The one on the left said, pointing at Svetlana, and while neither of the girls knew German, it wasn't hard to guess what they were saying. Smiling weakly at Sana, she stalked forward and let the guards grab her arms, the door sliding shut behind her. She just barely managed to get a glance of Oksana's heartbroken face. 

Svet bit her lip to keep from saying something about the tight grips they had on her arms. Instead of to the sterile room that she knew all too well, she was shoved through the open doorway of a room she'd never seen before. The door slammed closed behind her and she jumped, spinning around to see the guards had left her there alone. 

Blinking owlishly, Svetlana turned back around and observed the open space. It had padded walls and floors, and she could only assume that it was some sort of training arena. "You know, when they told me about your existence, I didn't quite believe them at first," a voice spoke, shocking her out of her thoughts and making her gaze flick to the opposite end of the room, where an old looking man with glasses was watching her, standing next to a completely still man with long dark hair and a muzzle covering the bottom half of his face. 

Svet shivered at the sight of the dark haired man's silvery prosthetic arm. She could just barely remember flashes of that arm picking her up and out of the hospital rubble. "What do you mean?" She finally asked the man with glasses. 

She didn't understand why so many people either wanted to experiment on her or kill her. "Well, I mean, come on. Tell me you can see _that_ hooking up with your mother," he pointed to the man beside him, and it felt like somebody had reached into her chest and plucked her heart right out of her chest. 

"H-He's my Papa?" Svet couldn't help but ask, her voice barely a whisper. As she tried desperately to meet the man's eyes, she saw that nothing on his face changed. He didn't _care._

"He's not much of anything," the man with glasses laughed, "but yes, he is your father. Where did you think your healing abilities came from? Your strength?"

Svetlana felt her hands begin to shake and her eyes fill with tears as she watched the man that was supposedly her father. The man with glasses suddenly made a face, stalking toward the seven year old and plastering what looked to be pity onto his features, crouching down in front of her. "I didn't mean to make you cry, honey. Look, my name is Alexander Pierce. I was the one that suggested you meet your father. Maybe he'll warm up to you," the man offered.

Svet glared at him through the tears that blurred her vision. "You did something to him! He won't even _speak!_ " She cried, a tear streaking down her face. Pierce deepened the pity on his face, and horrifyingly, looked like he was going to hug her. 

She threw a punch at his face before he could wrap his arms around her, and she watched as blood poured from his now crooked nose. Before she could even process it, her father was across the room and picking her up by her throat, his metal hand tightening dangerously around her windpipe. 

Immediately, she panicked, eyes wide as she clawed desperately at his fingers, but they didn't budge, not even an inch. "P-Papa?" Svetlana rasped, gasping for air as she stared directly into his flat eyes. It was like there wasn't even a person looking back at her. 

"Soldat!" _Soldier,_ Pierce yelled, "Drop her!"

In an instant, she was crumpling to the ground and sucking in air like she'd never breathed in her life. Her hands flew to her--no doubt--bruised throat as she looked up at him. He'd nearly choked the life out of his own daughter, and he still didn't care.

"The Soldat will protect any and all HYDRA assets as told by his handler. I am included in that. Try it again and I won't instruct him to stop," Pierce growled, brushing his hands off on his suit pants as he stood. 

"Chego ty khochesh'?" _What do you want?_ Svetlana cried, still on the ground and too afraid to stand. 

"I don't speak Russian. Try again."

"What do you want?" Svet screamed at him, her voice breaking. Pierce leaned down with a sickly sweet smile on his face, and he grabbed her chin. She didn't resist this time.

"Nothing at all, sweetheart. The Soldier here, though, well he's going to be training you. Who better to make you a killer than your father?"

And then Pierce stalked from the room, leaving Svetlana alone with the Winter Soldier. He was wrong about two things, she thought. One, she was already a killer. And two, this monster was not her father.

(Miles away, on a secluded farm, Clint Barton introduced Natasha to his family, and the woman vowed to protect them like she couldn't her own child.)


	10. ix | monsters

_**RUSSIA, 2009** _

**SVETLANA HAD PROBABLY NEVER BEEN MORE ANGRY IN HER LIFE.** Baring her teeth, she launched herself up from the ground and darted toward her father, making like she was going to slam into his midsection, but ducking under his legs instead and jabbing her elbow into the back of his knee. 

Instead of dropping like she wanted him to, he just turned with a grunt and grabbed her by the wrist, practically throwing her back to where she'd been before. 

Stubborn tears pricked at the seven year old's eyes and Svet growled under her breath. "Why don't you attack me for a change?" She cried, standing on shaky legs. 

It had been almost three months since she'd met him, and she was in here every single day, only for him to tell her to attack him, and get her ass handed to her for hours on end. 

"Fine."

Svetlana jolted, meeting his eyes and trying to see if there was a change. His voice was raspy with misuse, seeing as she'd only ever heard him say "Attack."

Before she could even steady herself, he'd thrown a punch at her, and she cringed back, expecting to be hit, but it never came. His fist had stopped inches from her face, and her wide, terrified eyes stared up into his. "Attack." He repeated the same word he said every single day.

He'd just proved that she was weak, that he could kill her in a moment's notice. Svetlana snarled at him, and threw her leg out in an attempt to kick him in the chest. He grabbed her ankle midair and squeezed, throwing her to the ground. As her hip slammed into the ground, a move that was--no doubt--going to bruise, an angry sob left her lips.

"You're such a jerk! I hate you!" Svetlana screamed, expecting him to just say "Attack" again. Instead, he blinked, emotion in his eyes for the first time.

"What?" He breathed, his voice gravely, and Svet frowned, her brows pulling together. His accent had dramatically changed too, from a German tilt to an American one. She couldn't place exactly where it was from, though.

"P-Papa?" The girl asked hesitantly, the anger bleeding out of her.

The Soldier took a cautious step backwards, frowning behind his muzzle. "Natalia?" He whispered in confusion. Svet sucked in a sharp breath, making her way to her feet. Why did he say her Mama's name?

"No, Steve. Stevie? Where's Steve?" He asked, ripping the muzzle off his face as his breaths quickened. She saw his full features for the first time, a sharp jawline and dark stubble. He looked unlike what she'd expected, and it even looked as though he had her nose. Or did she have his?

"Who's Steve? Papa?" Svetlana questioned. His eyes, filled with panic, flicked to her.

They were glazed over with confusion, but he seemed sure about someone named Steve. "I- I don't- Where am I? Where's Steve?"

The door slammed open, causing Svetlana to yelp, and she took a few steps back as at least a dozen guards streamed in, hands on their guns. "Stand down, Soldat!" A familiar voice yelled.

Svet cringed at Pierce's voice, and it seemed to unsettle her father too, who advanced toward the guards with an enraged look on his face. A few raised their guns like they were going to fire, but her Papa crushed them beneath his fingers.

One man tried to throw a punch, but his arm crumpled not unlike the guns. A whimper slipped past Svetlana's lips at the sight, and she watched as her trainer fought the guards as hard as he could, before he was eventually subdued, getting dragged down the hallway kicking and screaming.

Tears flooded the small redhead's eyes, and she was about to sink to the ground when a hand on her arm had her jumping in panic. Pierce was there, pulling her down the same path they'd just taken her father, and she simply allowed herself to be moved, knowing by now that if she'd tried to fight him, Oksana would be hurt.

Her father's screams got louder the closer they got to him, and she was dragged into a room she'd never seen before. It had taken nearly all the men to strap him down in a strange chair, and for some reason, Svet had the urge to help him. He'd been nothing but cruel to her for months, but she wanted to help him.

"Where's Stevie? What did you do to Steve?" Her Papa roared. Svetlana flinched with every word.

"Steve is dead. He's gone, Soldat." The man beside him spat unkindly. While the little girl didn't know who Steve was, it caused a pang of hurt to stab at her heart.

"No, no!" Something was shoved into his mouth the next moment, Svet's panicked eyes flicking back and forth between the man and her Papa.

And then he was screaming. Not like before, no, now his back was arching off the chair and he looked to be in pain. The redhead wanted to sob.

"Soldat?" The man asked when he stopped screaming.

"Gotovy podchinit'sya." _Ready to comply,_ her father responded.

Svetlana would probably always be haunted by the way his eyes were suddenly emotionless again. "You see that? Keep up your defiant act, and this will happen to you. To your sister," Pierce growled in her ear.

A tear streaked down her face before she could stop it. "You're a monster," she spat.

"Oh no, sweetheart. We make the monsters."

(Later, when she is led back to her cell and sees Oksana again, she will break down crying into her shoulder, and she will realize that it wasn't her father that was a monster after all.)


	11. x | dry eyes

**_RUSSIA, 2009_ **

**SOMETHING SVETLANA NOTICED ABOUT HERSELF WAS THAT SHE HAD FAR MORE SCARS THAN A GIRL HER AGE SHOULD.** She thought about it when she was lying awake one night, Oksana sprawled across her legs and preventing her from moving.

She'd tried to scratch at her knee but gave up when Sana had stirred, mumbling something indecipherable in Russian and wrapping her arms tighter around her legs. With the movement though, Svetlana had seen a silvery scar on her ankle, her pant leg having rode up.

It was small, barely noticeable, but she remembered exactly how she'd gotten it. It was from the explosion at the hospital two years ago. She had a lot of little scars and blemishes from that day, and it always made her angry.

She'd been so _stupid_. Throwing the canister of gas like that, so carelessly and so close to her and her sister. All she'd been thinking of was that if she allowed the people to get close, they'd die 100%. But with the fire, she thought they'd have a chance.

They'd never really had one at all. Huffing softly, Svet allowed her mind to drift back to her scars, and she brought her hand up to brush over the thin one under her eye. The one on her shoulder next. She even had a small burn scar on her left wrist where a burning piece of wood had landed. 

Tears pricked at her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Tilting her head up, Lana attempted to blink them away, but she accidentally stared straight into the florescent lights and they spilled down her cheeks.

With a small grunt, the redhead wiped them away. It was never dark in here. They didn't want to risk Oksana using the shadows to escape. While it was true them just being in the room created shadows, they were small, and she couldn't go far without getting lost.

The whole compound was lit up like a Christmas tree, and it was basically impossible for Sana to escape. Besides, she'd never risk hurting Svet or letting something happen to her.

Sometimes, she wished she'd never met Oksana. She wished she'd said no when Nadia offered to "save" her. But then she thought of never having those fun little moments of enjoying certain foods for the first time, or teaching her sister to dance.

A shaky breath left the seven year old's mouth, and she forced her lips to tug downward into a scowl. Her tears stopped coming, and Svetlana put her hand on Oksana's hair, toying with the knotted strands.

"Don't worry little fighter, tomorrow will be brighter," she murmured, and as her face hardened, she vowed not to shed any more tears over herself.

**_AMERICA, 2009_ **

"Hey Nat?" The spy looked up from the file in her lap, and realized that the position she was in, her legs crossed on the edge of the motel bed, was probably the least dignified Clint had ever seen her.

She responded with a questioning hum, her eyes going back to scanning the words in front of her. They'd just finished up their latest mission and were resting at a motel while they waited for the go-ahead from Coulson to carry out the next one.

"A few months ago, when I introduced you to my family. . ." He began, sighing, and he seemed to be taking a moment to think of the right words. "When you saw Lila, I. . ."

Natasha's gaze froze, and she was no longer processing the file in her lap. "That look, Nat, I've seen it before. That was the look of a mother." He said softly, his tone almost pitying.

"I'm not a mother," she spat before she could stop herself. Calmer, she added, "not anymore."

She finally looked up, meeting his eyes. "The day you saved me, I lost her. Her name was Svetlana, and she was five," Natasha told him, her voice unwavering. "She's gone. So no, I'm not a mother."

He didn't bring it up again. ****

**_TWO WEEKS LATER,_ **   
**_RUSSIA, 2009_ **

Svetlana could honestly say that she was shocked when she was told she'd be going on her first mission before Oksana would. She was quite literally in the middle of being thrown across the room by her father when Pierce had stalked in to announce it.

Her Papa stood at attention, but she took her sweet time, standing shakily with a glare directed the man's way. "I think it's time you got out into the field, don't you think?" He drawled, hands behind his back as he walked up to them.

All Svet could think of was how _snotty_ this guy was. "And don't even think about pulling the same act as last time. We won't be as lenient as your former employers. Soldat will be guiding you in this mission, and in all of your future ones."

In any other situation, she might've snarked with him, said something along the lines of, _You really need a super soldier to keep a little girl in line?_ But she didn't want to provoke him. Not this time. He had no idea that he'd just given her the one gift she'd been hoping for. Time alone with her father. Time to break through the conditioning HYDRA had subjected him to.

(She had no idea just how long it would take, and just how disappointed she'd be.)


	12. xi | memories

_**TWO YEARS LATER,** _   
_**RUSSIA, 2011** _

**IT WASN'T UNTIL SVETLANA AND OKSANA WERE NINE THAT** **SVET** **FINALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO TRY TO BREAK THROUGH HER FATHER'S CONDITIONING.** They rarely went on missions, something the girl was both relieved and annoyed by. Most of their time was spent training and testing, and even when they were sent out to eliminate a target or acquire something, Svetlana could never find a time to carry out her plan. It would either jeopardize the mission or risk their safety.

So after the nine year old's fifth ever mission, when she and the Soldier were recuperating in a low-end hotel and waiting for further instructions from their handlers, Svetlana sprung her plan on him. 

"Papa?" Svet was perched on the bed opposite to her father's, and she'd just plucked her knife from her side holster and placed it on the bedside table. Since her first outing, she'd been made to have weapons on her every second she was outside the compound.

"What?" He asked, his voice slightly aggravated. She knew that her calling him Papa instead of Soldat annoyed him, but if she wanted to try to break through to him, she didn't have a choice.

"Do you remember my Mama? Natalia?"

She knew for a fact he didn't. His eye twitched. "No."

Svetlana frowned, shifting. It wasn't at all like last time. "What about Steve?"

He reacted at that, stiffening. His brows furrowed and he blinked rapidly. "No," he eventually said again.

"Come on! You freaked out when I called you a jerk! You said Mama's name and Steve's name!"

At that, his head snapped toward her. "Jerk?" He murmured, clearing his throat. "No. . . Punk?"

At that, she frowned deeply. "Steve," he rasped. "Rogers."

Svetlana's eyes snapped open wide and her mouth fell open. "Captain America? Did you know Captain America?"

While she'd been with organizations who painted the war hero in a bad picture her whole life, the second she heard about him, she'd been sympathetic. He'd lost so much, and then lost himself.

"How did you know Captain America, Papa? He died over sixty years ago." Svet questioned, looking over the man who couldn't be over forty.

"I. . . fell? Arm. . ." He dropped his head into his hands and grunted.

"Papa?" She asked hesitantly, slowly climbing off her bed to make her way over to him.

"I knew him. He was. . . my friend. I knew him," his voice was quickly getting shakier and more panicked, and Svetlana didn't know what to do if he got violent like last time. He looked toward her, eyes wide. "Where is he?"

The little girl's heart broke. "He's dead, Papa. He died a long, long time ago."

If anything, he looked even _more_ panicked at that. "No, no. . ."

"Net. YA- YA neispraven." _No. I'm- I'm malfunctioning._

Sevtlana shook her head rapidly. "No Papa! HYDRA took away your memories! What you're seeing is real!" She cried, though she wasn't sure. He couldn't have know Captain America, could he have?

"Net," _No_. He snapped, and he stood abruptly.

"Vozvrashchaysya na bazu." _Report back to base,_ came the voice of the Soldier's handler from the walkie that crackled to life in his bag.

"No, no, no. Papa, pozhaluysta. My mozhem uyti. Papa, my mozhem uyti." _Papa, please. We can leave. Papa we can leave,_ Svetlana pleaded, grabbing hold of his metal arm.

He shoved her back, and she landed on the ground with a grunt, staring up at him. " _Papa._ " Her voice was heartbroken.

"Soldat," he corrected harshly, and she could feel tears rising in her eyes. She forced them not to fall, inching away from him and grabbing the knife she'd just set down and putting it back on her side.

When they returned back to the compound, he reported that he was "malfunctioning" and Svetlana was made to watch him be hurt all over again. Later, though, when she was back in her cell with Oksana talking a hundred miles an hour, she realized that he hadn't said anything about her begging him to escape.

_**ONE MONTH LATER,** _   
_**RUSSIA, 2011** _

Another time, when she managed to get him alone again, he called her Natalia once more. She tried correcting him, but all he saw was her Mama.

"I love you, Natalia," he said. Tears stung her eyes but did not fall. Would never fall again if she could help it.

"I love you too, Papa," she murmured, knowing that he would never really love her. He only loved the memory of her Mama.

(Later that night, she would return to an empty cell because Oksana was on a mission, and she would wish that she'd never been born.)


	13. xii | a change

**_THREE YEARS LATER,_ **   
**_AMERICA, 2014_ **

**IN 2012, STEVE ROGERS CAME BACK TO LIFE.** It spurred the biggest reaction from her father that Svetlana had ever seen. After being tied down and having enough electricity sent into him to power a small building, he'd continued to ramble under his breath about Steve.

He'd been put in cryo for over a year, and by the time he was let out, Pierce had told Svetlana that if she so much as uttered Steve's name, both her and Oksana would be punished. It had kept her from breaking through to him the rest of the time she was with him.

The move to a compound in America, though, had been a shock. She and Oksana were in separate vehicles to prevent any escape attempts, and her wrists were handcuffed behind her back. She even had chains around her ankles that kept her feet together, keeping her stiff and uncomfortable the whole time. 

Once she'd finally been reunited with Sana, though, in their brand new cell, she barely had time to say hello before she was whisked away again. It was strange, hearing so many people speaking English instead of the Russian and German she was used to, but it wasn't like she wasn't already fluent. Pierce only knew English, which honestly surprised her when she first found out. The leader of a Nazi organization didn't even know German? Russian at the least? 

It baffled her how such a cowardly man was leading HYDRA, but then again, if you looked up HYDRA in a dictionary, cowards would be listed under synonyms. 

"The target is Nick Fury," Pierce had said, eyes hard when he'd told them of their mission. He was clearly talking about Nicholas Fury, director of SHIELD, and the way he said his name implied he knew him personally. Which, being undercover in SHIELD would provide. 

Now they were inside of a random building in New York, and a rifle sat heavy in her hands. "Praveye na neskol'ko dyuymov," _To the right a few inches_ , her Papa commanded, and she shifted the gun ever so slightly. 

"Now."

When she heard that Steve Rogers would be near, and likely to try to catch them, she'd been afraid her father would have another meltdown, but he hadn't even blinked. Whatever they'd done to him in the years they were apart had strengthened his conditioning. Svetlana had all but given up trying to reach him. Whoever he might have been before, Svetlana was certain he would never be that person again.

She tapped the trigger three times, and heard a commotion inside, then promptly took off in a run, her father not far behind. Just before Captain America began to take chase, the Soldier shoved his daughter to the side, where she was hidden behind a corner, right as the blond man would have seen her.

She shrunk in on herself, and watched the living legend race past her, fully intent to catch somebody he used to know. Once she was in the clear, she made her way back down to the street, and found her Papa waiting for her in a dark corner of an alley, and then they were gone.

•••

She was sent back to the base after that, because her mother would be involved in the next mission. She'd known who her Mama really was for years now, and the fact that she never once came looking for her, well, it destroyed any love she'd ever had for her.

(Somewhere deep down, she knew that wasn't true.)

She knew her father was likely going to have to kill her mother, and it was one hell of a messed up situation, but she cared too much about Oksana to even think of trying to stop him. She was returned home just as Sana was being led to their cell. Svet was brought in right behind her, and the second the door was closed, she was hugging her sister close. 

"Kak proshla vasha pervaya missiya v Ameriku?" _How was your first mission in America?_ Oksana questioned once they sat on their respective cots, and with only the other girl to witness it, her face scrunched up in an indecipherable emotion. 

"Dumayu, papa ub'yet moyu mamu." _I think Papa is going to kill my Mama,_ the twelve year old admitted. Her sister didn't have a response, her mouth falling open before closing again several times, gaping like a fish. 

"Prosti, Lana." _I am sorry, Lana,_ she eventually whispered, coming over to sit next to her and grab her hand. 

Her thin, pale fingers twitched, and she looked down at their entwined hands. Tears did not rush to her eyes, not like they used to when an instance like this occured. "Do you want to dance?" She asked, standing up.

Oksana managed a smile, and she followed her sister up. It hurt their feet like it always did, but there was also a sense of calm that washed over the girls as they closed their eyes and let themselves get lost in it. 

Even hours later, when Oksana had long since stopped to rest and she could hear the commotion of her Papa being dragged to the chair, she kept on dancing. Even as he screamed loud enough for her to hear that _he knew them_ , she danced. 

•••

In the back of a SHIELD vehicle, Steve Rogers sat wide eyed with panic and disbelief tugging at his heart. "It was him. He looked right at me like he didn't even know me."

"How's that even possible? It was like seventy years ago." Sam commented, frowning, and Natasha could feel memories she tried every day to forget fighting to climb to the surface. 

"Zola. Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43, Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and. . ." The super soldier trailed off, leaving them to fall into silence. 

If she spent another second in just her thoughts, though, Natasha wouldn't be able to take it. "None of that's your fault, Steve."

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky," Steve replied emptily. A long time ago, the spy would've said the same thing about her daughter.

(When Steve falls from the helicarrier, Soldat drags him to shore, and he has the distant memory of somebody asking how he knows Captain America. When the blond wakes up in the hospital, the Soldat is there, and he stays.) 


	14. xiii | liar, liar

_**ONE YEAR LATER,** _   
_**AMERICA, 2015** _

**SVETLANA WAS THIRTEEN WHEN SHE WAS SENT ON HER FIRST SOLO** **MISSION** **.** Oksana had been sent on one the same day, but neither were allowed to know where the other was going for obvious reasons.

The redhead had dirtied her hands with blood long before she became a teenager, but this mission felt different. She didn't have her Papa there to guide her, no matter how distant he was. Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Svet allowed for a few seconds of wishing he were there, before she opened her eyes and got focused.

Straining her ears to listen, she watched her target through the scope of the sniper rifle that she held. "I still can't believe they let that man become an Avenger," the woman was saying to the man beside her, and with anger flaring in her chest, Svetlana put them both down.

She hated the way it made her feel proud. A sick smile tugged at her lips as she thought that she needed therapy, like yesterday. The smile faded as she imagined how a session would go.

 _"Draw a monster,_ " they would say, _"now why is it a monster?"_

And she would say, _"Because it's me."_

•••

"I knew you, didn't I?"

Natasha hid the way her heart skipped a beat, glancing away from Clint to meet Bucky's eyes. Everyone in the room fell silent, and she wished he'd chosen a time to talk about it when all of the Avengers weren't in the room.

"You were one of my trainers." The spy admitted, her eyes flicking to Clint's, who didn't seem that surprised, though he was beginning to frown, and Nat knew he was beginning to figure it out.

Steve on the other hand, was staring at the two with wide eyes. "You were HYDRA?" Bucky questioned, beginning to pull away, but she shook her head.

"Red Room. You were rented to us for a few years."

Everyone in the room seemed upset at the use of the word "rented" like Bucky was less than a human. Like he was an object.

Natasha was extremely uncomfortable at this point, she felt like she was being put under microscope for all of her teammates to watch her squirm. "You knew?" Steve asked, breathless.

"I didn't know he was Barnes, if that's what you're asking. He was just Soldat to me," she shot back, gritting her teeth at the insinuation that she'd just strung her friend along.

"Natalia," Bucky finally said, eyes lighting up, and the redhead froze.

"Natasha," she corrected firmly, and she left the room, unable to talk about it any longer.

No matter how much she tried to forget, it seemed her past would never leave her, and it always--without a doubt--made her remember _her_.

•••

"Did you know that my Papa was as old as Captain America?" Svetlana asked as she sat, cross legged on her cot. Oksana was laying on her own with her head hanging off as blood rushed to her head.

Squinting at her sister, Oksana shifted so her hair brushed against the ground, earning a grimace from Svetlana as she imagined all the germs that she'd just collected in the dark strands. "Yeah, he's- wait, was?"

Oksana sat up quickly, blinking for a moment and running her hand though her hair. "Did something ha-"

"Net," _No,_ Svet interrupted, shaking her head. "On prosto bol'she ne moy papa." _He's just not my papa anymore._

"Zachem?" _Why?_ Oksana asked, her brows pulling together in a frown.

"He left," the teenager answered simply, shrugging and trying to look indifferent, even as her sister's face fell.

"Oh, Lana. . ." The other girl came over to sit next to her, a move she did often when she was trying to comfort Svetlana.

"They always leave, Sana," she whispered, her voice breaking. Tears didn't come, though. Svetlana didn't think tears would ever leave her eyes again. "Everybody I've ever cared about has left me. Everyone but you."

Oksana blinked rapidly, her eyes shiny. "My mama loved you," she insisted.

"She still _left_ , Sana." Lana replied tiredly.

Neither of them said anything for a long time, but Oksana lied her head on her shoulder and squeezed her hand. "I won't leave you, Svetlana," she promised.

(She didn't know when she was saying it that it was a lie.)


	15. xiv | red rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi don't hate me

_**THREE YEARS LATER,** _

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

" **TELL ME, LANA, IF YOU COULD TIME TRAVEL, WHEN EXACTLY WOULD YOU GO?" OKSANA ASKED FROM HER POSITION PERCHED UPON THE SMALL KITCHENETTE.** Svet gave her a flat look, not stopping her hands from continuing to put her beretta back together. She'd just finished cleaning it out of boredom, and was running out of things to do.

"I don't know, probably like the forties. It would be totally cool to meet Peggy Carter," Svetlana answered, both of them wisely ignoring who else would have been in the forties. "What about you?"

"I'd save my mama," the dark haired girl said instantly, her voice soft, and Svet squinted down at the gun in her hands as she finished rebuilding it. 

It went unsaid that Lana wouldn't even bother trying to see her parents. Clearing her throat, Oksana turned her attention to Svetlana's hands. 

"Grease! Ooh!" She hopped off the counter and came over, swiping her finger across the grease staining the redhead's hands and rubbing it under her nose. 

"I mustache you a question," she said, waggling her brows suggestively, and a grin broke out on Svet's face. 

She fluffed up her red waves, making a kissy face. "What's that? I can't hair you."

Sana burst out into laughter, wiping the grease off her face with her sleeve and opening her mouth to say something when the burner phone in Svetlana's bag began to ring. 

All amusement left the teenagers, Svetlana answering it and putting it to her ear immediately. "Vasha sleduyushchaya missiya reshena. Podrobnosti budut otpravleny vam v soobshchenii." _Your next mission has been decided. Details will be messaged to you._ Said their newest handler. She didn't have a chance to say "Yes, sir," before the call was ended. 

She pulled it away from her ear and looked to the messages that were sent immediately, one after the other. 

_Target: Maria Hill._

Under that was a picture of a vaguely familiar woman that Svet recognized worked with SHIELD. The picture was clearly taken without the woman's knowing, seeing as in the corner of the picture, just barely visible, she was talking with Hawkeye. An Avenger. 

A muscle under her eye ticked as she realized just how likely it was that they'd see one or more Avengers on this mission. "What is it?" Oksana asked, just as Svetlana began to read through the description of where she'd be and when. 

"A SHIELD agent. Let's go." The redhead tossed the phone to her sister and stood, digging through her bag and pulling out a small set of knives. They had roses carved, detailed, into the handles of each and every one. 

It had stemmed from Oksana saying her hair was red as roses when they were younger, and then brightening and saying it should be her code name. 

_"It's stupid and cheesy,"_ Svet had told her, but the dark haired girl had only smiled.

" _It's also incredibly aesthetically pleasing,"_ Sana replied, grinning, and the redhead had broken down into a fit of giggles, asking how the other girl even knew that word. 

As they got to ready to make a kill for HYDRA, her small smile faded from her face. The name that had stemmed from amusement was stained red with the blood of everybody she'd killed. 

There was red in her ledger, she though, and nothing could wipe it out. (Perhaps she was more alike her mother than she knew.)

•••

Svetlana shifted from her position huddled in a dark corner of Maria Hill's apartment, she and Oksana waiting to strike. She snorted softly at the thought that Sana must be right at home, and her sister shot her a look that she could barely see. 

If she'd made that noise when the target was there, they'd have been made. Luckily, though, Hill was just now entering the apartment. Svet could hear the lock clicking open, glad she'd relocked it after they broke in, because a SHIELD agent would remember if they locked it or not. 

As the door opened, it was clear that the target was on the phone with someone, so they'd have to wait to strike until after she hung up. It would take longer to investigate her disappearance if nobody knew of the assault directly when it happened.

"Yeah, Nat." Hill spoke, and them laughed after a small pause. "SHIELD could use you, you know. If you ever get tired of being a superhero, the offer's always open."

The sudden realization that this woman was talking to her mother struck Svetlana like a truck, and she just barely managed to stifle a surprised sound. 

Suddenly Hill froze, though, so it was clear she hadn't stifled it as well as she thought. "I've got to go. Call back in ten minutes." She hung up, tucking her phone away and reaching for a gun. 

Svetlana mentally cursed herself, and lunged out of the shadows before Hill could search them out, swiping at the woman's throat with her knife. 

"Shit!" Hill jumped backwards, throwing out her left hand fist in a punch and quickly aiming her pistol in the other. 

Oksana appeared directly behind Hill, kicking her in the back of the knee and sending her to the floor, her gun clattering from her hand. 

Svet threw her knife directly at Hill's throat, but the woman rolled out of the way, kicking at the redhead's ankle. Luckily, Lana was a lot stronger than that, and didn't budge, dropping down to straddle Hill and throw a punch at her face. 

Her head snapped to the side, and even as blood spilled from her nose, she only grunted and shoved her knee up into Svet's gut, who let out a hiss of pain, and suddenly the roles were reversed, Hill on top and wrapping her hands around Svetlana's neck. 

The teenager didn't panic, though, just watched as Oksana smashed an expensive looking vase over the SHIELD agent's head. 

She slumped over, either dead or unconscious, and Oksana grinned down at her. "We make one hell of a team, yeah?" She held her hand out for Svetlana and pulled her up, both of them glancing down at the woman. 

"Would you like to do the honors?" The redhead asked in a dramatic voice, stepping back and holding out her hand. 

Sana gave a grin, before grabbing Svetlana's knife from the ground and bending over, about to plunge it into Hill's throat. 

The target shifted, and Svet only had the time to widen her eyes before Oksana was letting out a startled, "Oh shi-!" and Hill's gun went off three times. 

(Lana could only watch as her sister took a stumbling step backwards, her hands slowly coming to her stomach, before she disappeared into the shadows she was standing in.)


	16. xv | a mother's hope

**_AMERICA, 2018_ **

**SVET'S OTHER KNIFE FELL FROM HER HAND, HER MOUTH OPEN IN A SILENT CRY, AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS, TEARS WELLED IN HER EYES AND STREAKED DOWN HER CHEEKS.** "S-Sana?" The teen breathed, blinking rapidly, and she barely felt it as her knees collided with the ground. 

As the seconds ticked by, filled with only Hill and Svet's heavy breathing, it was clear that Oksana wasn't going to reappear. She was gone. 

Her sister was gone. 

Svetlana's eyes remained on the ground as Hill stood, her gun aimed at the teen. She pulled out her phone with her free hand, clearing her throat before she called someone. 

"Hey. Yeah, I need a team sent out. I was almost killed just now." There was a pause, and if Svet had wanted to, she probably could have listened in, but she didn't have the energy. It was like losing Oksana had zapped away any care for her own life she had. 

"Red Rose, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, HYDRA's Red Rose."

•••

It was cold. Svetlana had zoned out for most of the trip to wherever the SHIELD agents had taken her, but now that she finally came back to herself, the first thing that she noticed was that it was cold. 

She sat in an empty interrogation room in an uncomfortable metal chair with sturdy cuffs wrapped tightly around her wrists, and the thing that bothered her most was the cold. It was strange, because she'd grown up in cold, it had bled into her skin and bones and become a part of her, yet right now, it was an itch that could not be scratched.

The door opened suddenly, startling her, but she didn't show it. She just looked up, and met the eyes--eye--of the man in front of her. Her brows shot up. "Thought I killed you."

Nick Fury sat down in the seat across from her, a similar look on his face. "So it was you that shot me? You were there that day with Barnes?" He questioned, and she hated that she'd already given him something. 

"Sure was. How are you alive anyway?' 

"Why would I tell you that? I don't have a death wish, thank you very much," he returned, a smirk on his lips. She kind of wanted to punch him in his dumb mouth. 

Svetlana rolled her eyes and jerked her cuffed wrists upward, ignoring how it hurt. "What am I going to do cuffed to this table?" In all honesty, she really could break them if she tried hard enough. There were a lot of things she could do if she tried, but she just. . . didn't.

"You could do quite a lot with that super soldier blood in you," Fury answered, a smug look settling in his face as Svet's eyes widened. 

"So you know," she murmured. 

"That they experimented on you with Barnes' blood? It wasn't hard to figure it out. We got your blood when you were spacing out and it was a match for his."

A laugh slipped from her lips before she could stop it. If she could, she'd spread her arms out dramatically. "I got his blood all naturally, Pirate."

She took pride in the fact that his eye widened slightly, and watched as he sat back in his chair. "You're what, sixteen? Seventeen? I find it hard to believe that the Winter Soldier had himself a love child while under control of HYDRA."

"Well, from what I've found out, he was rented to the Red Room for a little while. His conditioning probably wore off long enough for him to get friendly with my mother," Svetlana explained casually. 

"The Red Room. Your mother is. . ?"

" _Was_ Natasha Romanoff. You can't tell me you don't know," the teenager said, annoyed as she rolled her eyes again. Despite the front she was putting on, her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest with how nervous she was. Would they send her parents in to interrogate her? Would they hope they'd make her have an emotional response?

Whatever they tried, she wouldn't break, that was for sure. Fury crossed his arms over his chest, his eye flickering to the side for the briefest of moments. She realized then that he really didn't know, and she'd just handed him the information on a silver platter. Whoops. 

"Agent Romanoff never mentioned a daughter. Neither did Barnes," he told her, and she snorted before she could stop herself. 

"I doubt they would, considering they left me and never looked back." It stung, no matter how much she tried to forget them. 

The look on Fury's face then, she couldn't quite decipher. 

•••

" _Agent Romanoff, I'm going to need you and Barnes to come in."_

Nat raised a brow, causing Clint to give her a funny look. It seemed she was always interrupted only when in a room with all or most of the Avengers. "Me and Barnes? Why?"

" _Trust me, you're going to want to see this,"_ Fury insisted, but Natasha merely rolled her eyes. 

"If you want us to come in, you're going to need to give us a valid reason. I'm pretty sure Steve is attached to his boy toy," she replied, knowing very well that the super soldiers could hear her from their spots on the couch across from her. 

Steve squawked while Bucky rolled his eyes. Everyone in the room but the two themselves knew that if Bucky was anyone's, he was Natasha's.

" _Does the name Svetlana Romanova ring a bell?"_

Her face dropped in an instant, her blood running cold. Everyone in the room was alarmed right away, not used to seeing Natasha showing much emotion, especially not the dread they could clearly see now. "Nat?" Clint murmured, while Bucky was frowning, and he reached up to run his hand through his hair, seeming to scour his memories for something. 

"What?" Steve asked softly, mostly to himself because he hadn't meant to listen in. 

"Where did you hear that name, Fury?" Natasha demanded, hardening her face and voice. 

" _The owner of it just said it to me. Why, familiar?"_

At that moment, the spy wanted nothing more than to tear out his throat. "Don't mess with me like that. She's dead, she died eleven years ago," she hissed, and noticed her best friend's face flooding with realization. 

"Uh, what's going on?" Tony asked unhelpfully, quirking a brow. 

"Svetlana?" Bucky murmured softly, and Steve turned to look at his friend. 

" _No, Natasha. She's sitting in my interrogation room alive and well. She just tried to kill Hill."_

She sucked in a sharp breath, shaking her head. "I saw her body, Nick. She was buried under rubble, surrounded by fire." For what seemed to be the hundredth time in her life, she felt like she was under a microscope. All of her teammates were watching her with varying emotions on their faces. 

"Budapest?" Bucky asked shakily. "There was a hospital. I. . . I took two girls."

Natasha abruptly hung up. "You took her? To HYDRA? She's alive?" She demanded, standing up and taking a step toward him. 

"Who is Svetlana, Nat?" Wanda asked softly, a frown on her face. 

"My daughter," she admitted, "she's my daughter."

(It was the first time in a very, very long time she'd thought of the girl in present tense.)


	17. xvi | here

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**IF SOMEONE HAD TOLD HER HOW HER DAY WAS GOING TO GO WHEN SHE WOKE UP, SVETLANA WOULD HAVE LAUGHED IN THEIR FACE**. She still sat in the interrogation room, had been for hours likely, but she was more jittery than before now. 

She'd heard bits and pieces of Fury's phone conversation because she strained her hearing, and she knew that she was going to see her parents soon. The people that she had cared about, only for them to leave. 

Everybody left her, she thought for which was not the first time, and it was really true. Even Oksana, who she'd thought would always be there had left. A pang of hurt stabbed at her heart at the thought of her sister. God, it hurt. 

Muffled footsteps met her ears, and Lana's head snapped up as she steadied her hands and forced her legs to stop bouncing. And then the door was opening, and in front of her was the woman she'd fantasized would come back for her for years. Her mother. 

Natalia Alianovna Romanova. "Hey," Svet said lamely, "long time no see."

That was really what she was leading with? She almost cringed, but didn't want the woman in front of her to see it. "Svet," her mother breathed, an unreadable expression on her face. 

"Svetlana," the girl corrected, "You did name me, right? It's not hard to remember."

There was a mix between guilt and pride swirling in her gut at the heartbroken look that settled on Natasha's face for a split second. "Svetlana," she tried again, "I didn't know you were alive."

"Right," Lana rolled her eyes. 

"I'm serious, Svetti, I thought you were dead. I was sure you were dead," her mother insisted.

"Oh, poshel ty na khuy!" _fuck you!_ The girl growled, letting out a laugh of disbelief. "You didn't look! You just moved on and became a freaking superhero and forgot all about the freak daughter of yours! You never saw my body, and you didn't care, you don't care! If you cared you would have looked!" 

"I did!" Natasha exclaimed, eyes wide and filled with so much hurt. "I did see your body, I did."

Svetlana frowned. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I spent every waking moment looking for you after I left the KGB, Svet. And I found you. In a hospital in Budapest, eleven years ago."

And then she got it. She got why her mother never came looking, because she thought there was nothing to look for. "You were there, under all that debris and you looked dead, Svet. There was fire everywhere, and if I hadn't left, I'd be dead. I didn't think. . . I didn't think it was even remotely possible that you were still alive. If I had, I would've walked through that fire and dug you out. I would've taken you with me, you have to believe me."

That last sentence was where she went wrong. Svetlana didn't have to believe a damn thing, but she did anyway. Tears were shining in the infamous Black Widow's eyes, and her daughter wasn't far behind. 

"Um, I would hug you, but, uh. . ." Svetlana gestured to the cuffs around her wrists, which her mother immediately stalked over to an unlocked. The second Svet stood, Natasha was pulling her against her chest. 

She stiffened at first, not used to anybody but her sister so much as grabbing her hand, but after a few seconds she forced herself to relax, slowly bringing her hands up and hugging her back just as tightly. She was careful not to hold her too tight, though. She didn't want to hurt her. 

It was ironic really, she didn't want to hurt the woman who'd given her a lifetime of pain. Hesitantly, Svetlana lowered her head onto Natasha's shoulder, getting a whiff of strawberry and cinnamon that was for some reason, achingly familiar. 

Tears came to the teenager's eyes for what seemed to be the hundredth time that day, and she gripped her mother's shirt tightly as they rolled down her face, soaking into Natasha's shirt. "Mama," she whispered, her voice shaking.

"Oh, Svetti. Baby, I'm here," the spy murmured, hushing her quietly while running her hand through Svet's hair. A silent sob wracked the girl's body, her legs feeling all too heavy suddenly. 

Her mother must have sensed this, because she lowered them to the ground, gathering her in her arms as tightly as she could. "Oh God, I've missed you. I've missed you so much, Svet."

"I missed you too. Mama, Mama, I'm so sorry," Lana squeezed her eyes shut as she began to shake. She was a murderer. A ruthless and efficient murderer, but she was also a child.

She was a little girl that just needed her mother. And finally, for the first time since she was four years old, she'd found her.

(And for the first time in a long time, the happiness she was wary to let herself feel would last.)


	18. xvii | surrounded but alone

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**WHEN SVETLANA FINALLY PULLED OUT OF HER MOTHER'S GRASP, SHE FELT TERRIBLE**. Her face was sticky with tears, her throat had a lump in it that wouldn't budge, and her nose was runny. 

She stood up with as much dignity as she could, wiping at her face and clearing her throat as Natasha stood too. Tears were shining on the older spy's face, something that made Svet feel both guilty and proud. Making the Black Widow cry couldn't be an easy feat. 

"So, uh, what now?" Lana questioned, shifting her weight from foot to foot and watching her mama with hesitant eyes. 

"I need to speak with Fury. I'll be right back, I promise."

With that, Nat strode from the room, Svetlana watching her leave. 

•••

Her mother had gotten into a heated argument with Fury, that much Svetlana knew for sure. She'd pressed her ear against the door because nobody had bothered to cuff her back to the table, and she'd heard hushed whispers from both of the adults she'd just spoken to. 

Just when she thought she might be able to make out some of their words, footsteps were suddenly coming back towards the door and she jumped backwards, plastering an awkward smile on her face as her mother reappeared. 

"Hey."

"Hi," Natasha returned, a small smile tugging on her lips. "You're coming with me." 

"Where?"

"Avengers Tower. Unless you'd rather stay here, which I'm guessing you wouldn't," she explained. She'd assumed correctly. 

Staying in this cold place with no familiar faces that reminded her all too much of HYDRA was not at the top of her to-do list. At least at Avengers Tower, her mother would be there. And so would her father, if she was thinking correctly. "Yeah. Okay." 

And so they left. 

•••

Arriving at the tower, Svetlana didn't quite know what to do. Her mother had started toward the entrance, but she didn't budge, staring up at the imposing building with a thousand emotions on her face. 

"Svet?"

Natasha had noticed she'd stopped, and turned to her. "Will--uh, my father be here?"

"Yeah, he's here. All the Avengers are. They're waiting for me--us."

Svetlana pursed her lips, nodding slowly, and finally followed her mama inside. They stepped into an elevator that opened without prompting, and didn't have any buttons. "To the common floor, please, FRIDAY."

"Right away, Agent Romanoff. Nice to meet you, Miss Romanova." A mechanical voice said, the elevator beginning to rise. Svetlana nearly had an out of body experience, jumping and looking around with wide eyes.

"Oh, that's just FRIDAY. She's Tony's AI," Natasha explained sheepishly, and before Svet could say anything else, the doors were sliding open to reveal the Avengers themselves. 

"Natasha," Clint called as the two redheads entered, and Svet eyed him tensely, before moving her gaze to the others. They were all watching her like some fun science experiment about to go off. 

"Guys, this is Svetlana," Natasha said, like it wasn't obvious, but the room remained silent, almost awkwardly so. 

"Hey, kid. I'm Clint." The one and only Hawkeye greeted, coming over and holding his hand out to her. 

She raised a brow as she shook it. "I know."

A grin broke out on his face. "I like you," he turned to Natasha, "I like her."

Tony Stark laughed, which surprised Svet, but she didn't show it, looking to him before her eyes found her father. He was stood next to Captain America, and he looked a thousand times different than last she saw him. She wanted to say something, but struggled with what to call him. 

He'd never like it when she called him Papa, and she couldn't very well call him by his last name, it would be too informal. So, with lack of anything better, she said stiffly, "Soldat."

A pained look crossed his face, and he cleared his throat. "Please, call me Bucky." His voice was faint, questioning. So different from the firm and assertive she was used to. He even held himself differently.

"Okay, Bucky," Svetlana corrected, shifting. She noticed Captain America's hand resting on her father's arm, and tilted her head, eyes locked on the small movement. 

For a moment, she pondered why she thought of everyone else by their names, but the blond by his title. "What is it?" Natasha asked her softly. 

"Guess he finally found 'Stevie'." Svet mused, eyes flicking between them. Bucky's eyes widened in surprise, as did his friend's. 

"What?"

"You. . ." Lana started, then bit her lip, realizing now that maybe he wouldn't appreciate being reminded of his time at HYDRA. "You, uh, acted out a lot whenever you remembered Steve. Took me a while to figure out you meant Captain America."

The room was so filled with tension then that Svetlana felt like she would drown in it. Unconsciously, she shifted closer to her mother, not even realizing she'd done it. "Uh, maybe we should give them some time, guys," Clint suggested to everybody not in the little assassin family, and it wasn't long before the three were alone in the room. 

As Svet watched her father, though, it was clear he needed Steve. His hands were shaking slightly, and his heartbeat was slightly accelerated. He wasn't ready to talk with her, let alone be her father, and Lana understood. 

"Actually, is there somewhere I could be alone? I won't kill anyone or run away," the teen asked, her voice taking a joking tone at the last part. 

Natasha met Bucky's eyes for all of two seconds before she looked to their daughter. 

"Of course. There's a guest room that can be made yours. Tony's agreed to let you stay here."

Svetlana merely nodded, and let herself be led down a hallway to a door that matched every other one surrounding it. "This is it. I'm just two doors down. If you want, later I could show you where everything is."

When the girl looked into her mother's eyes, she could see hope there. She'd hate to crush it, so she forced herself to smile. "Of course."

Once Natasha had left, she opened the door to her new room and walked inside. It was huge with a large, comfortable looking bed, a sizeable closet, and a had a door that presumably led to her own bathroom. And yet, as she stood in the middle of this luxurious place, she felt so alone it hurt. 

(If she could go back to cold, uncomfortable cells with her sister by her side, she probably would.)


	19. xviii | uncle steve

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**WHEN SVETLANA FINALLY FOUND THE NERVE TO LEAVE THE ROOM--NOT HERS, NOT YET--IT WAS NIGHT TIME**. She hadn't managed to get any sleep, hadn't even sat on the bed for longer than a few minutes, but she wasn't tired. She was mentally exhausted from the day's events, sure, but not physically tired. 

If anything, she was still wired, her thoughts racing. It didn't seem real that just that morning, she'd been laughing with her sister. Now Sana was dead, and she was sitting in Avengers Tower. A slightly hysterical laugh slipped from Svet's lips at her blunt thoughts, and the only thing that dragged her out of it was a slight stab of discomfort from her stomach. 

She was hungry. She hadn't eaten all day, and glancing at the clock on the wall revealed that it was almost two in the morning. She lost Oksana yesterday, and time would continue to move on without her. In an attempt not to start crying, the teen stood. 

"FRIDAY, could I get something to eat?" She asked hesitantly. Maybe Avengers were weird and locked their food up until meal times. Who knew?

"Of course, Miss Romanova. Mr. Stark has told me to inform you that this is your home for the time being and they have more than enough food for you." The AI responded helpfully, making Svetlana pause. 

"Did he _just_ say that? Is he still awake? That's unhealthy."

"You are still awake as well, ma'am." FRIDAY said, her voice not revealing any emotion. She began to wonder if FRIDAY could feel emotions, but shoved that existential crisis down for another day, and made her way from the room. 

It felt weird, being able to walk around at night without guards guiding her with guns trained on her or the constant worry that Oksana would be hurt if she misbehaved. Hell, it felt weird to walk around freely at all.

Even when on a mission, there was still always the worry, the stress that they could never be free. Still, she'd go back to HYDRA in an instant if it meant Oksana would come back and they'd be together again. 

Svet sighed heavily as she entered the darkened kitchen, and she shuffled over to the fridge, pulling it open to stare at its contents. She'd never had much of a choice. Something she was beginning to realize was that she'd never had much of anything. 

Svetlana closed the fridge and found some bread, deciding to make toast instead of something cold, then sat herself at the island and ate quietly in the dark. It was slightly surreal. Footsteps approaching the room had her tensing suddenly, and she looked around for a weapon but was once again reminded that she wasn't a new house guest, she was a prisoner and she wouldn't be allowed something that could hurt others.

Steve Rogers entered the kitchen, and she relaxed slightly, nodding to him. He gave her a smile, eying her plate of plain toast and raising his brow. "Don't want anything else?"

Svetlana shrugged, and watched him as he opened the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs. "You're gonna make eggs at two in the morning?" She asked, blinking in surprise. 

"Couldn't sleep and my metabolism is pretty fast," he told her, both of them wincing at the noises pulling out a frying pan made. 

"Mine too. Not as fast as yours or So- um, Bucky's. But faster than normal."

The silence in the room was tense for a few moments, but Steve broke it after putting three eggs on the heat, turning to her. "Bucky doesn't dislike you, you know. He just can't. . ." He trailed off, struggling to find the right words. 

"I know. He's not the same person he was, and I'm assuming he's not who he was before HYDRA either," Svetlana said softly, looking down at her plate and thinking back to the man that had nearly killed her the first time she saw him. The man that threw her to the ground and gave her enough bloody noses and fat lips for a lifetime. The man that she'd done everything she could to save, and that had abandoned her because he didn't even remember she existed.

"What, um, what was he like? At HYDRA?" Steve questioned hesitantly, turning back to the pan and doing something she couldn't see. It was clear that he'd never ask his friend that, and Svet felt a bit of pity for him.

"He wasn't a person. He did anything and everything the officials demanded, and didn't care about me in the slightest," she answered truthfully, watching as he became more and more tense. "But everytime he remembered you, he broke down. He'd fight off the agents, asking where you were. It destroyed him when they said you were dead, even though he barely knew who you were."

A small sniffle sounded from him, making her grimace. Great, she'd made Captain America cry. But he looked back at her, blinking away tears. "That means a lot. Thank you, Svetlana."

The redhead didn't know what to say to him, just watched him for a bit, but eventually her curiosity won out. "Did you call him a jerk or something?"

He startled, nearly dropping the plate of eggs he was preparing. He set it to the side, making a few more for some reason. "What do you mean?"

"Around the time I first met him--I must have been seven--I called him a jerk. He was teaching me to fight, and I lost every time. He lost it, thought I was my mom and he kept asking about you."

Steve looked even more heartbroken at that, not meeting her eyes. "It was a thing we used to do. I called him jerk, her called me punk." Taking a small breath, he forced a small smile on his face and apologized for getting emotional.

"It's not a problem. Lord knows I'm emotional," she said stiffly, once again thinking of Sana. 

"From what it sounds like, you've definitely got a reason. Fury told us you lost your partner yesterday? Shadow?"

"Oksana," Svet corrected, her brows furrowing. "She was my sister. Not biological, of course," she added on seeing the look on his face. 

"I get exactly how you feel. Bucky's always been like a brother to me. When I lost him, it changed me," he sympathized, and she felt as though she understood the war hero just a little bit more. 

Turning off the stove, Steve put one of the plates of eggs in front of her, along with a fork. She gave him a questioning look at that. He responded with, "All you've eaten is warm bread."

She accepted it, of course, and he sat down next to her to eat. In an attempt to rid them of the silence, she cleared her throat. "If you're my dad's brother, does that make you my uncle?"

He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I guess so," Steve joked, amused. 

When she finished her food, getting up to put her plate in the sink, she turned back to him one more time. "Night, Uncle Steve," Svetlana called with a small smile. 

"Goodnight, Svetlana. Sleep well," he called back. 

(She went back to the room, sat on the floor, and did not sleep at all.)


	20. xix | belief

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**WHEN MORNING FINALLY CAME, SVETLANA WAS HESITANT TO LEAVE THE ROOM AGAIN**. She'd left it during the night to get food, but during the day when she knew at least two or more people would be there, she couldn't quite get the nerve. 

The redhead sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the wall, and she was picking at the skin around her nails, bored with nothing else to do. Oksana would smack her hands, telling her she looked like a rabid squirrel attacked her cuticles. 

A stab of grief hit her in the heart, but she ignored it, swallowing and continuing to pick. "Miss Romanova, your mother is wondering when you'll be coming to breakfast," FRIDAY announced suddenly, making her blink in surprise. 

She was slowly getting used to the disembodied voice, but it still unsettled her. "Um, now, I guess."

Svet got up from her spot on the ground, brushing her hands over her torso and thighs before squinting down at herself. She was still wearing the same stealth suit she'd been wearing to attempt to kill Maria Hill.

She'd need new clothes. After attempting to rake her fingers through her tangled hair, the teen finally made her way toward the kitchen, her enhanced ears picking up animated talking before she got there.

It fell awkwardly silent as she entered, making her regret leaving the room at all. "Svetlana," Nat greeted, smiling a bit. She nodded at her mother, slowly walking toward her. 

"Hi, Svetlana. Do you want some pancakes?" Asked the one and only Scarlet Witch. 

She blinked at her, glancing to the others in the room. All of the Avengers except for Stark and her father. "Sure."

She sat down in the same spot she'd been last night, in between her mama and Steve. 

"Get any sleep?" The blond supersoldier beside her questioned, and she managed a small smile, nodding. Anybody with eyes could see it was a lie. 

Slowly but surely, the conversation began to pick up again, without Svetlana, leaving her to just watch and listen. 

Wanda set a plate in front of her with a kind smile, then turned to presumably hand off other plates. The teen picked up the fork that was on the plate and stabbed at one of the fluffy pastries, a sudden memory flying through her mind. 

She'd only ever had pancakes before one time. It was back at that cabin in Budapest years ago. Nadia had been outraged that she'd never had any and had made some from scratch immediately. She'd tried to get Svetlana and Oksana to help but that only ended in disaster and a flour explosion. That cabin had to have been the only time in her life she was truly happy. 

Coming back to the present, she noticed Wanda glancing away from her with an odd look on her face, but ignored it. Svet began eating just as Stark shuffled into the room and veered toward the coffee pot. 

After gulping down a probably inhuman amount of caffeine, he turned, looked everyone over and locked eyes with her. He nodded. "Flower girl," he said as if it was a normal thing to say. 

"Kakaya?" _What_? The girl blurted in confusion, then promptly repeated herself in English. She got an indecipherable look from her mother but Stark looked unbothered. 

"Red Rose, right? I think the name is cheesy, but you do you."

A frown crossed her face for a second at the bashing of the nickname Sana had created, but she brushed it off. She was beginning to understand his personality a bit. 

"Metal man," she said in return, earning a snort from Clint who was for some reason on top of the fridge. She looked up at the archer for a moment, wondering if she should ask, but decided not to.

After that, the tenseness of the room mostly faded, and Svetlana felt a little bit more at ease. "So, Svetlana. Your name's pretty long. Any nicknames you prefer?" Wanda questioned, leaning against the island right in front of her. 

"Svet's fine," the teen answered, poking st her food with her fork. "My mother called me Svetti when I was young."

"Well everyone's gonna call you that then. What about, um, Lana?"

_"Should call you Lana. . ."_

She visibly tensed at that her fingers tightening around the fork so abruptly she could feel it beginning to break the skin. "No. Just Svet," she said firmly, giving a small shake of her head. 

And there came that tension again. 

Svetlana hated the way she could feel all their eyes on her, could feel the pity, the confusion, the worry. Standing suddenly, she strode from the room, leaving her half eaten food behind. She knew they'd only worry more now, but at least she didn't have to remain in the same room as them as they did so. 

Lana didn't know where she was going, didn't know where anything but the room and the kitchen were, so she just wandered. Being sure that Stark monitored his AI, she didn't ask for directions anywhere, just went wherever her feet took her. 

It was to a gym, apparently. She listened for anybody inside, but hearing not a single heartbeat or breath, entered and looked around. It was more equipped than she imagined a regular gym would be, but that was a given due to the fact that it was for the Avengers.

"FRIDAY, if I were to say, punch the shit out of one of those bags, would it break?" Svet called into the empty air, her eyes locked on a punching bag near the middle of the room. 

For a moment, the AI didn't answer, and she was beginning to feel very stupid for talking to herself in this large room, but FRIDAY finally said, "No, Miss Romanova, it would not break. They were constructed especially for Captain Rogers by Mr. Stark in 2012."

Nodding slowly, Svetlana made her way over to one, running her hands lightly over the thick cloth. It brought back a few memories she'd rather forget. After a few seconds of just standing there, she got into the correct stance, took a deep breath, and threw a punch. It sent a dull ache up her arm, something so familiar that it soothed her, and it didn't take long for her to lose herself in the ambience of it. 

_Sana entwined their fingers together, giving her a toothy smile. "I won't let anyone hurt you anymore," Svet promised, unaware of what was to come. Oksana believed her_. 

A particularly hard hit broke the skin of the knuckles on her right hand, but she paid it no mind. She'd heal. 

_Tears filled her young eyes as she looked to her sister. "It is the only way we will live. It is the only way to escape," she said earnestly. Oksana believed her._

Svet's breaths began to come quicker, harsher. She was vehemently ignoring the pain in her hands and arms. 

_Sana slept, curled around Svet's legs, unaware of the redhead's thoughts, of her eyes on her. "Don't worry little fighter, tomorrow will be brighter," she whispered, stroking her hair. Oksana believed her._

Rage built up deep in Svetlana's chest, anger making her hit harder and faster, her breaths shaky. 

_"I won't let anyone hurt you anymore." Oksana believed her._

A ragged gasp tore from Svetlana's chest, and her punches grew more sloppy. 

_"I won't let anyone hurt you anymore."_

She missed. Staggering forward, she let herself bend over, bracing her hands on her thighs and panting. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push the thoughts away, but failing. 

_Oksana believed her._

Svetlana Romanova was a lot of things, some she'd labeled herself, some labeled by others. A killer. A monster. A child. A weapon. 

But the one that resonated the most with her, the one she most believed to be true was perhaps one of the very first things she'd ever called herself. 

A liar.


	21. xx | a sister's love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know some people are kinda wondering where I'm taking this story, and they're thinking that i'm making her think about sana too much, but frankly it's not enough. i lost someone recently, someone not as close to me as oksana is to svet and think about her constantly, so those of you saying she focuses on her too much probably haven't lost anyone recently. anyways, hope you guys enjoy the chapter!!

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**"WHAT DID THE BAG DO TO YOU?" A LOW VOICE CALLED, BREAKING SVETLANA OUT OF HER THOUGHTS**. Her eyes wide, she spun around, putting one hand absent-mindedly behind her to stop the punching bag from slamming into her back. 

"S-Bucky," the teen greeted her father, eying him. He was standing in the doorway, his posture tense but face indecipherable. 

"Svetlana," he nodded. 

She stood there awkwardly for a few moments, just watching him. The tension in the room was getting thicker and thicker, so much so that she felt like she could cut it with a knife. "I can go," Svet said finally, gesturing toward the hall with her head. 

"You don't need to. I'll go," Bucky replied, a hint of disappointment and something else in his voice. As he turned to leave, she sucked in a sharp breath. 

"You don't have to go either. You could, um, stay?" Her voice got higher as she talked, and her face contorted in a grimace. "It's a big gym."

"It is," he agreed, nodding, and turned back to her. "Good form. When you were, uh-" Bucky gestured to the still swaying bag. 

Svetlana could remember how he beat her and threw her to the ground, how she'd shed blood and tears for a long, long time before she'd been able to perfect her stance. "You taught me," she mumbled, running her hand over her arm and trying to push the memories away. 

Soldat wasn't her father, not anymore. Her father never had been Soldat, she realized. Because the person that fell in love with her mother couldn't have been the cold-hearted monster that she'd known. 

Bucky was tense at her revelation, even more so than before, and she thought he was going to leave. Then she panicked, because she was finally in the same room as him, talking to him. "Um, maybe we could spar?"

The fear in his eyes then reminded her of Oksana, the way she'd looked at her as she stumbled backward. She looked away.

"Yeah. Sure. Just, uh, not, um-"

"I get it. I'll go easy on you," Svet teased, making sure he realized that she knew what he meant. 

He offered her a small smile at that, and they made their way over to the padded area, Svetlana getting flashbacks to doing this same thing back at HYDRA. They both got into place, and the girl watched her father with slightly narrowed eyes. "You come at me, okay?" 

He nodded, and without warning, lunged forward, throwing a punch with his flesh arm, which she dodged easily, kicking out her leg and using a lot of her strength because she knew how powerful his legs were. His knee buckled, but as he fell, he slammed his hand into her legs and pulled her down with him. 

Unlike the more serious fights at HYDRA, the move had Svetlana giggling. She brought her elbow down on the back of his neck lightly, not enough to seriously injure him, and kneed him in the stomach, successfully squirming out of his hold. 

He groaned out a laugh, staying on the ground as she stood up. "Been a while since anyone but Steve beat me in a fight," he told her, climbing to his feet. 

"I'm as strong as you," Svet responded, allowing a small grin to stay on her face. Bucky grinned right back, if the miniscule curve of his lips could even be classified as a smile. 

"Oh yeah?"

The seconds the words left his lips, he was swiping her legs out from under her again, and she landed on the grunt with a grunt, gaping up at her father. "You jerk!" She cried, panting out a laugh and dragging herself to her feet. 

And then she remembered the last time she'd said that to him, her eyes widening as she watched him. He looked to be remembering something too, blinking rapidly and not meeting her eyes.

"Papa?" She asked, then sucked in a sharp breath. "Sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine," he cut her off, then blushed. The Winter Soldier could blush? "Um, if you want to. You can call me that, it's okay."

She stared blankly at him for a moment, processing the multiple stuttered words and the awkward way he held himself, and she finally realized where all her awkwardness came from. His face was becoming more anxious at her lack of response, so she smiled tightly. 

"Bucky is more comfortable for you, so I'll stick with that," she told him, though she really, really just wanted to call him Papa and have him hug her. That wasn't in the cards, though. She didn't know if it ever would be.

He nodded thankfully, and they stopped talking. Getting back into the correct stance, she raised her brows. Her father took a breath and threw a punch.

* * *

That night, Wanda came to her and offered to let her borrow some of her clothes, and even if she hadn't wanted to, she would've said yes anyway. Wearing the same things for almost three days was making her feel disgusting. 

After the awkward exchange with the older girl, she'd taken what Wanda had given her and returned to the room to shower and change. Showering with hot water was a pleasant change, they usually only had the chance at the hotels they stayed at for missions.

After that, though, she wasn't sure what to do. She sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, running her hands mindlessly through her damp waves. She was tired, had been for a while, but didn't think she could sleep that night. It was beginning to become a habit.

Svet pondered going to see her mother, but felt strangely disconnected from her at the moment, and Steve was okay, but she didn't know him, not really. The only person in her life that she'd ever truly known was Oksana. 

God, she just wanted to hug her one more time. Even if they ever found her body, she doubted she'd be able to look at it. A deep frown contorted her face, her brows furrowing. Where could her body even be? Had she traveled somewhere nearby and died there? Alone? Or had she collapsed in the darkness and died there? Tears welled in Svetlana's eyes at the thought of how much pain her sister must have been in. She'd been shot before, but not in the stomach, not that many times.

Nothing could save her, not unless she'd dropped right into the hands of surgeons who could dig the bullets out and give her blood. A sudden thought had her jolting forward, nearly falling off of the bed if it weren't for her balance. Sana wasn't in full control of her powers, especially when injured. 

Svetlana wiped at her eyes and left the room, her heart pounding. "FRIDAY, where's Stark?"

"Boss is in his lab, Miss Romanova. Is everything alright?"

The teen could only nod, and made her way toward the billionaire's lab. She hadn't been there yet but she'd seen Stark coming and going from it, so she knew the general direction it was in. When she got to the door, she could see Tony on the other side, hunched over a work table. 

Svet brought her hand up and knocked, concealing the nervousness and worry she was feeling. His head snapped up and he said something that she could barely hear, the doors sliding open. The room was likely soundproofed. "Flower girl, what's up? Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"I'll sleep when I'm dead. Stark, I need your help," she replied, clenching and unclenching her fists repeatedly. 

"Sounds like another teenager I know," he mumbled, so quiet she was sure she wasn't supposed to hear, so she ignored it. 

"Stark _, please._ "

He raised his brows. "Alright, alright. And drop the last name, okay? It's Tony. Hell, even Metal man was fine," Tony said, tilting his head in an indication that she could talk.

Svetlana might have smiled if it weren't for the situation. "There's someone I need you to find. She-She's sixteen, she has long black hair, she has Indian features, but she's clearly mixed. U-Um, her eyes are brown and she's about my height. She-"

"Woah, woah, woah. Kid, slow down. Who the hell is this girl I'm looking for? And why?" Tony interrupted, frowning in bemusement.

Taking a shaky breath, the redhead pursed her lips. "Oksana Miroslava. She's my sister, and I think she's alive."

(Miles away, she was.)


	22. xxi | a sister's eyes

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**"I'M SORRY SVETLANA, I JUST CAN'T FIND ANYTHING," TONY TOLD HER FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME, AND SHE SORT OF WANTED TO PUNCH HIM IN HIS PERFECT TEETH.**

"Stark, come on. Just look for anybody like I've described. You can hack into HYDRA databases, right? Find a picture of her. Please," the teen begged, her voice almost desperate. 

The billionaire gave a sigh, turning to look at her. "Look, Svet, I'm looking, and FRIDAY is looking. I've checked everywhere in the state, okay? FRI will continue to look in surrounding areas, and I really really hope your sister shows up, but as of right now, there's nothing else I can do."

Frustrated tears burned at Svetlana's eyes, and she squeezed her hand tightly around the edge of the workbench she was gripping. She'd been so stupid to hope. Denial was one of those stages of grief, right? "I just. . ." Her shining eyes flicked up to meet Tony's. It startled her when she looked at him and saw Oksana's eyes. 

It was like someone had plucked them right out of Sana's skull and gave them to Tony. Shaking the thought a way, she continued, "when I had nothing, I had her. Oksana was the only person in my life who never left me, and I know it's not her fault, I know she would never do it on purpose, but she's gone, she's gone and I've never felt more alone."

Tony's brows were pushed together in sadness and he sighed. "I know you don't know any of us well, kid, but we're all here for you. I've never seen Nat act the way she has around anybody but you. Hell, even Barnes acts different with you around. Steve too. I'm pretty sure I heard Clint talking to Bruce about how he wants to approach you but he's afraid you'll murder him or something. Like mother, like daughter I guess."

By the time he finished talking, she was almost smiling. "I know I shouldn't feel like this. I know Natalia is my mother, and I know once upon a time all I wanted was her back. I know that she used to tuck me into bed and tell me everything would be okay, but I can't. . . That's not me anymore, and it's not her. I grew up without her there, and the most important person in the world to me will always be my sister. Even if we never find her, I'm not gonna stop looking. She's everything, Tony. She's saved my life a hundred times over. It's my job to save her."

Tony shifted, his eyes flicking between her face and her fidgeting hands as she talked. "I don't have much experience with teens, with kids in general, but I'm here, okay? I won't go snitching to Natashalie and Barnes about whatever you say," he told her firmly. She nodded, smiling weakly at his words.

Feeling his eyes on her, she was suddenly desperate to change the subject. "Much? That implies you have some."

A smile tugged on the billionaire's lips. "My intern. Peter Parker. He is absolutely nothing like you, Flower girl," he explained.

Svet raised a brow. "Should I be offended?"

"Nah, definitely not. You're cool and badass. And I love the kid, but he is probably in the antonym part of the dictionary for badass."

A snort escaped her before she could stop it, and Lana sat down at the workbench she'd been nervously standing by, running her fingers over the spot she'd crushed slightly. "Oops," she mumbled, giving Tony a sheepish look. 

He sighed. "I'm actually used to that," he pointed at a similar spot that she had very decidedly not done. 

"Your intern?"

"No, no. Spider-Man." He shook his head, his grin not fading. It took her approximately five seconds to figure out that his intern was Spider-Man. He spoke in the same time when talking about both of them, was clearly very fond of both, and he'd hesitated when she asked if it was her intern. 

"Like I said, your intern."

His wide eyes snapped to her. "How did you-"

"I'm Red Rose, man," she interrupted, spreading her arms in a dramatic fashion.

Stark shook his head, sighing exasperatedly. "You will be the one telling him that you found out all on your own because he will not believe me," he pointed at her, brows raised. 

"Me? You want me to meet your intern?" She asked, mouth falling open. Why on earth would he want that?

"I think he'll have a stroke when he meets you. Just introduce yourself, and the second he hears your last name, he'll like, pass out."

Humor glinted in his eyes. "You are _evil_ , Tony Stark," she said, shaking her head with an amused grin. 

"I could totally take over the world if I wanted to," he offered, shrugging. 

Breathing deeply, Svetlana squinted. "Make me your second in command and I'll help."

"You've got it," he replied, and Svet felt truly light and happy for a moment. 

Tony had the feeling of a sort of fun uncle. "Do you think she's alive?" She asked softly, and watched his smile fall. 

"I think that if she is, we'll find her. I promise you, if she is on this earth, I will find her," the billionaire swore, tone firm. 

Giving him a thankful smile, she couldn't help but wonder what it would mean if she wasn't. What if Oksana was still in the shadows, and she would remain there?

(Little did she know, Oksana knew where she was, and went the other way.)


	23. xxii | alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I took so long! ive been really into the criminal minds fanfiction and i was whumping my favorite characters of course, but ill never forget about you lovelies🧡

_**AMERICA, 2018** _

**"WHEN YOU WERE A KID, DID YOU EVER IMAGINE YOUR LIFE WOULD TURN OUT LIKE THIS?" SVETLANA ASKED, SHIFTING IN HER SPOT ON TONY'S COUCH.** The man glanced up from his work with a single raised brow. 

"Did I, a very, very misbehaved child with anger issues think I'd be surrounded by assassins and superheroes? No, Flower girl, no I did not," he replied, a grin on his face that made even her smile. 

"You know you're a superhero too, right?" She asked, tilting her head. 

The more time she spent with him the past few days, the more she realized just how the man thought about himself. 

Tony's grin froze, turned jagged. "Obviously. I am Iron Man," he scoffed, puffing up his chest. 

"I wasn't talking about Iron Man. I was talking about Tony Stark," Svet said gently, and she watched as his eyes turned soft. 

He then made an exaggerated pout, holding his arms out. "C'mere. You're my favorite now."

Even as the redhead laughed, she very quickly gave him a hug. Then her stomach growled, a sign that she hadn't yet eaten. "Go eat some grapes or something," Tony commanded, waving her to the door. Her mouth dropped open, and she whacked him lightly on the arm. 

Emphasis on the "lightly," because she forgot her own strength sometimes, hence the handprint in the metal table in the very workshop they were in, and the bruises on he father's back from when she threw him to the ground during their latest sparring session. 

"What? I can hear your stomach growling from here. Go eat some grapes before your stomach eats itself."

"Why grapes? Why not literally anything else?" Lana asked incredulously, her brows shooting up, but he just shrugged. 

"You are so weird," she mumbled, but she padded out of the room anyway, finding her way to the kitchen and pausing just outside it before she entered. 

She heard only one heartbeat, and when she peeked in, Svet saw that it was her mother. "Hi."

Natasha glanced up from the book in her hands, but she'd clearly known she was there. "Hi, Svetlana. Do you need anything?"

The girl shook her head, hating how nervous she suddenly felt. One moment she could be completely fine, comfortable and in her element, but the next, she felt so impossibly small and inconvenient. Looking at her mother, she felt small.

"Tony said I need to eat," Svet told her, and then she walked over to the fridge, peering inside it. She frowned. 

"Weren't there grapes earlier?"

"I thought Tony had them."

Realization struck her, her mouth falling open. "That _bitch_."

Natasha suddenly laughed, and it startled a grin out of the teen. "You guys might wanna start looking for a replacement Avenger. I can't promise he'll remain intact," Svetlana offered, smiling. 

"I hear Bucky's already training someone," Nat winked, and Svetlana tried not to beam. 

" _Please_ , we all know I'm the one training him."

Natasha kept smiling, but she didn't say anything, just watching her. Svetlana shifted where she stood. "Are you okay?"

"Ty takoy bol'shoy." _You got so big_ , Nat said finally, her voice soft. Svetlana's eyes widened. 

"YA voobshche-to ochen' malen'kiy. Ne pokhozhe na nezdorovoye malen'koye. Prosto malen'kiy. V tselom. YA boltayu, ne tak li? YA. YA ostanovlyus'." _I'm actually very small. Not like unhealthily small. Just small. In general. I'm babbling, aren't I? I am. I'll stop._ By the time the girl had stopped speaking, her face was flushed with embarrassment and she was breathing a little heavier, her gaze falling to the ground. 

"When you were born--" The switch in languages made her look up, her eyes curious. "--you were so small. Smaller than any baby I'd ever seen." Nat cleared her throat, closing the book that still sat in front of her. 

Svetlana sidled closer, not having heard much about when she was young. "I'd seen other children, of course, even other babies, but you. . ." Her mother trailed off, her lips pursing. 

She was surprised to see tears shining in the older woman's eyes, her brows furrowing in worry. "You were delicate. So breakable and soft, and I've never felt like I did that day again," Natasha said, "God, Svetti, it was like my heart had been plucked from my chest and turned into this living, breathing thing, and I didn't know how to protect you."

She broke their eye contact for a moment, and then looked back at her. "I know it can't change the past, I know that you're not that same child anymore, but I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, to protect you like I couldn't before."

Natasha looked almost pleading, she looked desperate for her daughter to accept this vow. And Svet wanted to. She really, really wanted to. 

But she couldn't. 

"You can't," she said finally, shrugging helplessly. "You can't protect me."

Nat looked like she wanted to say something else, but she bit her lip instead, letting Lana continue. 

"Natalia, Mama, I love you." She hated how her mother flinched at her name, but continued on. "I have always and will always love you. Nothing's changed that. But I am my own protector."

"Svetlana. . ."

" _No_ , Mom."

Nat clamped her mouth shut. 

Svet took a breath. "Do you know how old I was the first time I killed somebody?" She asked, and when she got a small head shake in response, she pursed her lips. 

"Five. The first time I watched someone I care about die? Five. The first time I got shot? Buried under a building? Abandoned?"

A small sob wracked the older spy, and it broke Svetlana to do this to her, but it needed to be said. She couldn't be treated like this delicate thing that needed to be saved. 

"I was taught to kill before I was taught to smile, Natalia. And I don't blame you, I could never blame you because I know your childhood was just like mine, and you did everything you could for me, but you didn't raise me. You _can't_ raise me. I raised myself, alone." Her voice trailed off into a whisper, and she didn't realize she was looking at her hands until Natasha had reached across the island to grab them. 

"I know that. Baby, I think I've always known that. You're not a little girl, you're right, you're not a kid. But you're my daughter. Svet, you're my daughter and you are not alone anymore," her mother said firmly, an assuring look on her face as she tightly squeezed her hands. 

Svetlana pulled away, though, frowning harder. "I am."

"No," Natasha shook her head, blinking, "no, Svet. Not anymore."

"I _am!_ " She cried, her volume startling both of them. "I am alone, because I've always been alone, Mom. It's always been me and my sister, and now it's just me because she's gone, and you suddenly being here doesn't change that I'm as alone as I've ever been."

"Svet--"

"I don't know you!" 

They both fell into a shocked silence, their eyes wide. "Mama, I don't know you. I barely remember you at all. If I hadn't been constantly told about the infamous Black Widow, I wouldn't know who you are. If I didn't see your face on every magazine and news station out there, I wouldn't recognize you."

Natasha was gaping at her, her eyes red and shining. "Svetlana," she tried, but a lump in her throat stopped her from continuing. 

"I love you, Mama. I am your daughter and you are my mother, and I know you care, but I really don't know you. I don't think I ever have," she said, and finally, she was done.

Nat sucked in a heavy breath. Then another, and another until it didn't feel like she was going to pass out right there. Before she left the room, though, Svetlana slid her arms around her mother's torso and gave her a quick hug. "I'd like to get to know you, though," she murmured. 

Natasha hugged her tighter.

(Little did Svetlana know, her sister felt just as alone as her, and she did not get to talk about it, nor did she get to do anything but grieve.)


	24. xxiii | acceptance

_**SIXTEEN YEARS AGO,** _

_**RUSSIA, 2002** _

**A LONG TIME AGO, WHEN NATALIA WAS A LITTLE GIRL, BEFORE SHE'D ACCEPTED THAT THE RED ROOM WOULD ALWAYS BE HER PRISON, SHE'D IMAGINED BEING A MOTHER**. She used to see a little girl or boy on a film, or even on some of her earliest missions, and she'd ponder the idea of being a mother. 

She wanted to raise a child, brush away their tears when they cried, and pick them up when they fell. She'd wanted it more than she'd ever wanted anything, and then when she finally did have a child, albeit an unexpected one, she'd been so devastated she felt sick. Raising a baby there, in the confines of those walls, leaving them destined to have a life like hers, it was a fate--no doubt--worse than death. 

But she was selfish. She was selfish in the way that she let the baby live, she let her grow and become a person, and she let her be born. She was selfish because she knew her baby couldn't have a good life, wouldn't have a good life, but she had her anyways. 

And really, it was the best and worst decision she'd ever made. Natalia had not loved many people in her life. (Soldat, Yelena, Nadia.) But when she laid eyes on her daughter's face, her impossibly small arms and legs, she loved.

More than anything or anyone in her life, Natalia loved Svetlana. That was why it was so hard to see her, to walk into the room they kept her and look at her tiny body, covered in wires and tubes, crying, uncomfortable. It was hard, because she ached to wipe those tears away, she ached to tell her that everything would be okay, and she ached to whisk her away from this place. 

Instead, as she returned from her latest mission, a twinge of pain in her ankle as she limped into the room, she watched her daughter. Svetlana was crying like she almost always was, a sound that hurt Natalia so deeply to her core. She watched her, and she wondered how anybody could hear a baby's cry and ignore it. 

And for the first time, she didn't let her keep crying. With trembling hands and the knowledge that she'd get in trouble for this, Natalia reached for her, carefully removing all of the medical devices from her, and she picked her up. 

The spy was used to holding things tightly, weapons and drinks, people's limbs as she broke or twisted them. She wasn't used to holding a child, her grip only tight enough to keep her snugly in her arms. Not many things could make Natalia Romanova cry, but the fact that Svetlana had stopped crying the second she was in her arms did. Tears streaked down the woman's face as she brought one hand to the little girl's cheek. 

Bright blue eyes peered up at her in wonder, a small hand coming up to grasp lightly at her arm. Her nails scraped against Natalia's skin, but she didn't care at all. In fact, even though it hurt, she'd do anything to feel that touch all the time. "Ty tak bezuprechen." _You are so perfect_ , she whispered to the baby who didn't understand a word she spoke. 

Svetlana made a small gurgling sound, smacking her hand against Natalia's chest, and it drew an unexpected laugh from the woman. "You're strong. You're going to be so much stronger than me, won't you?"

Neither of them knew it, but she would be. She'd have to be. 

Loud footsteps on the wooden floors of the hallway caught her attention, and she knew her time was up. Still, she held her a second longer. Very gently, Natalia pressed a kiss to her baby's nose, smiling at the scrunched up face she made, and she set her back down again. 

Svetlana's crying began anew as she hooked her back up to everything, and it broke her heart all over again. "Don't worry little fighter, tomorrow will be brighter," she murmured, and then she turned and she walked away. 

Svetlana continued to cry.

_**PRESENT,** _

_**AMERICA 2018** _

If Svetlana Romanova could call herself anything, it was stubborn. After the heart-to-heart she'd had with her mother in the kitchen while looking for grapes, a sentence she really never thought would pass her mind, she'd avoided her like a bat out of hell. The teen had never been particularly good at expressing herself, and when she finally blew up, she'd been petrified. 

After fleeing the room, her only emotion was panic, because she'd just critiqued the Black Widow's parenting, she'd yelled at her, made her cry, and she'd generally been a terrible daughter. And when she made her way to the gym, the only place that could calm her down nowadays, she sat down against the wall, and she wallowed in the fact that the only person that would know what to do was gone. 

And since that day, she'd started to accept the fact that she was gone. Because, really, had it ever been anything but hope that had led her to ask Tony to look? 

Tony attempted to get her to open up a few times in the following days, and so did Bucky when he noticed how sluggish and dulled she'd been during their sparring session, but the one to get through to her was actually a complete surprise; Wanda Maximoff.

While Svet quite literally dangled off the edge of the roof, her legs swinging mindlessly as she swayed slightly, brows furrowed in thought, someone dropped down next to her, starling her enough to make her jump. 

She raised a brow, turning her head to meet the older girl's eyes. "Scaring somebody on a roof? Smart," she commented sarcastically, but she was actually genuinely curious as to why Wanda was there. 

The other girl directed a pointed look at Svetlana's hands. "You're holding on tightly. You wouldn't have fallen unless you wanted to." A pause. "Plus, I have magic."

A small grin tugged at Lana's lips, and she let her gaze drift back to the skyline. She was searching for something she'd never find, someone she'd never find, and it just made her hurt more. "My brother used to call me Red, sometimes," Wanda told her softly. Bemusement slammed into the teen full force, a frown adorning her face as she met her gaze again. 

"Because of my powers. The first time he saw them, he called me Red. It was a silly nickname, and I was pretty easygoing with it, I let it slide when other people called me it. And then he died."

Svetlana knew this story. She knew it because she'd lived it. 

"I didn't realize it at first, but one day during training, Clint called me Red and I sort of froze up, because the last person to call me that was him," Wanda murmured, her voice impossibly sad. 

"Why are you telling me this?" Svet begged, her voice dangerously close to breaking. 

"I'm trying to say I understand." Wanda looked away, a small sigh leaving her lips, and for a moment, Lana saw herself in the older girl. 

"I know it's not completely the same, because I had a body to bury, I had closure, and your sister is still out there, and we don't know if she's really dead," Svet's eyes snapped to hers, "but I get it."

"You don't--"

"I get the hurt, Svetlana. I get the grief. Pietro was my everything, and after he was gone, I felt so alone I couldn't breathe," Wanda said, not a hint of untruthfulness in her tone. "I know nobody means as much to you as Oksana does, and I know she was the only one that really knew you, but Svet. . ."

The teen looked to her lap. Her legs had stopped swinging, instead hanging limply, deathly still. Wanda sighed. "Svet, just because you're alone right now, doesn't mean you always have to be. You can let people in. You can let us in, and in return we'll let you in. If you don't want to be alone, you have to put in some effort too." There was a long, pregnant pause as neither of them spoke, the only sound being their breathing and the wind that enveloped them. And then Wanda added one final thing. "That feeling you have right now? It doesn't always have to be like that."

And then Wanda stood, turning around and walking toward the elevator. "We're having movie night, if you'd like to join," she called, stepping into the enclosed space. Svetlana continued to look out into the distance for all of a second, before she craned her head to see an expectant gaze on her. 

"Hold the elevator," she eventually said, and she got up, leaving behind her self-pity. 

When they got down to the common floor, she situated herself between her parents and offered the team a hesitant smile. They all smiled back.

(The next day, Svetlana would go to her mother with the proposition of going clothes shopping together, and the shattered relationship between them would mend, just a bit.)


End file.
